Day 1: Oh Right, I'm Doing This

My son woke up a lot last night and at about 5:30am, decided we should be up and ready to party. I finally convinced him to go back to sleep and subsequently snoozed my alarm a few too many times. When I opened my computer to reply to a couple emails, I saw this blog opened and thought, "Oh. Right. That's starting today." It's not that I wasn't excited about doing this challenge or that I didn't want to do it, but after a long night with a baby, cuddling in bed and eating Cheetos (me, not baby) sounded super appealing.

The struggle is real.

But I pulled my lazy butt out of bed and while I fantasized about coffee, I pulled out my red yoga mat with the bite marks from when my husky was a puppy. I decided to start slow since I haven't practiced in a while and I didn't want to push it. I've enjoyed Ashtanga yoga in the past and elected to start with five cycles of the A series of the primary series. If you're not familiar with it, here's a picture guide taken from trueryan.com's downloadable chart:

No complicated pretzels here!

Seems easy enough, right?

No. My muscles are tight, I can't touch my toes without bending my legs practically into a squat, and every fiber of my body kept screaming, "OH MY GOD WTF ARE YOU DOING?!"

Once I finished my five cycles of the A series, I did one of the B:

About halfway through, my arms started quaking in downward dog and I felt really frustrated with myself. I thought today wouldn't be that hard but it really was. I haven't really done much in the way of exercise over the past few months unless you count lugging a baby around so I'm pretty much starting from scratch. I know I'm probably being hard on myself but I hate struggling. Hopefully that's something that I will overcome during this year of yoga.

After I was done, I actually felt pretty good. The poses got my blood moving and I felt kind of invigorated. I'm not going to go so far as to lie and say I swapped out my coffee for some herbal tea--the only tea I have is supposed to be beneficial for breastfeeding which means it tastes like ass. But if I feel good physically and a little more alert mentally after just one day where I spent my whole practice trying not to cry, that's got to be a good sign, right?