Each time I stop and restart something, I start from scratch. It’s a weird character flaw.

Anyway, I had started the first few days of that Yoga Challenge, then stopped, then restarted…and wanted to share my thoughts – as the lessons are online and it’d be cool for you to know what to check out if you wanted to give it a try!

Day One of the Yoga Challenge I’ve done now three times. The first time I thought it was dumb. The second time I couldn’t make it through it without pausing since it’d been a while. The third time was after another day that wasn’t challenging and I was fired up and ready to work it.

I don’t love squats OR circling around if I don’t know what I’m dong so by the third time it was easier, I wasn’t trying to stare at the computer monitor (sometimes I hook the laptop to the TV but mostly can just listen from the computer now). It really is a good whole body workout. For fair warning, it isn’t really any type of intro to yoga.

That came on Day Two of the Yoga Challenge. I don’t get why it was suggested as a morning thing, I like it way better late at night, before bed time. The slow breathing practice doesn’t wind me up, it winds me down. It is just breathing. Anyone could do it.

Day Three of the Yoga Challenge was even more funny to me. I think I’d have started with two, then three, then one. The core workout was just what I needed to wake my body up again and not feel like I was struggling with the ideas of yoga poses again.

So maybe try it my way? Since I’ve been doing yoga for a few months and they are the experts I’d just follow their plan. But whatever, just my feedback!

The good new is I’ve kept up with it all, doing even more than one a day if I have time to calm myself down, I’ll do the breathing more often.

I also have added a full weight lifting workout pretty much every other day. Next is getting back on the treadmill, my least favorite thing in the world.

I’m not really a newbie, not anymore. But yoga is making me a NEW me, so that’s what I’m thinking about today. Being a newme.

Wanted to just share some things I’ve been spending my time lately thinking about.

“The thought manifests as the word, the word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit and the habit hardens into character. So watch the though and its ways with care…let it spring from love.”

Stepping back and simply observing the world without passing judgement makes it easier to tolerate change and allows you to let go of old ways of thinking and accept new ones.

We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our past action, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future can be produced by our present actions, so we have to know how to act.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”

Now, let’s be honest. I’m pretty awesome . So I’m not all trying to recreate me, me has a lot of good baggage I can be proud of. But starting a new thing, whether it is a commitment to work out or eat more chocolate, whatever it is, most people I see fail. Or at least to not be harsh, have many hurdles to overcome to be successful. Remembering strong suggestive thoughts like these can remind you it can be easy to do that thing, make that change, grow and bloom into someone who isn’t talking about what they should be doing. It’s also helped me not want for anything, by starting to realize I have so much more than I need.

During our trip out to the Grand Canyon, we hired a local guide to drive us and take us around and tell us all the information he could. It was a great thing to do that I’d suggest to anyone – it went way beyond just checking out the view and made us feel connected to the environment we were experiencing.

I love the aspens all over Park City, and loved hiking through them this summer and skiing through them covered in snow in the winter. But I *really* loved seeing the aspens at the Grand Canyon. They changed earlier than the ones in Park City, and were the brightest yellow I’d ever seen. We were told by our guide a fun fact I didn’t know. The root systems of aspens are specially interconnected. It was a neat concept I pondered as we drove through the forests. A single seedling could give root to a whole large colony of the trees.

The interconnectedness of the trees goes a lot with the theories I’m exploring in my yoga journey right now. The concept of rooting is important, when you firmly place your feet in to the ground. I can stand taller, straighter, and balance better when I concentrate on my rooting. It also made me think of how important you connect to you particular role in life, as you are interconnected with all aspects of your life and those of others.