I posted on my blog recently about how I seemed to have lost my daily yoga routine, that is to say, my disciplined six-days-a-week Ashtanga yoga practice. When writing in this, I thought that I had reached the point where it was now time to settle down and return to my mat each morning, time to recover this practice and make it a part of my day as natural and necessary as showering.

I thought wrong!

I tried there’s no doubt about that – I really really tried! But it’s proving to be a LOT more difficult than I’d anticipated.

Every day, for the past two weeks, I have been setting my alarm extra early, at 6 am, to leave time to practice yoga before getting ready for work. And every day, for the past two weeks, I have been hitting snooze continuously until reaching the point where I barely have thirty minutes to spare before I have to be out the door and on my way to my job.

Hmmm…

I thought I was setting it too early – I tried 5.30 am a few times thinking I could fit in some morning pages before yoga (a type of journalling that is a steady free-flow of your thoughts).  A bit ambitious to be fair.  Anyway, seeing as how journalling couldn’t induce me to leave my bed, I settled for the lazy hour of 6 am instead. But still no success.

I thought I wasn’t getting enough sleep, that perhaps getting to bed close to 10 pm and not turning off the light until after 11 pm was why it was so hard to get myself up early, that I was too tired and simply needed more sleep. But nope, that didn’t work either and besides, last year when I was super-duper dedicated to my morning routine I still managed to get up at 6.30 am after going to bed at 1 am on one or two rare occasions. Clearly, it’s not a question of a lack of sleep.

So given how difficult this project is turning out to be, I put my thinking cap on and worked out a new and hopefully more effective plan. It will go something like this:

Step 1
My alarm needs to be far away from my bed and not next to my pillow or else the urge to hit snooze is too easy to oblige. When that bell sounds, the only way to get me out of my bed is if turning it off actually requires me to get up in the first place. That will be the first thing taken care of – dragging my yoga-arse out of bed.

Step 2
The next thing is to make sure I don’t crawl straight back in once I’ve presumably hit snooze again. For this, I have a slightly unpleasant but hopefully highly-efficient solution – a water spray. Next to my alarm will be this innocuous little bottle filled with cool water and I plan to spritz my face with it the second I turn off the alarm, thus banishing from my mind the recent memory of my snuggly cosy bed.

Step 3
Naturally this will be the point where I’m cursing and swearing at the fact that I’m now wet and cold and haven’t even been awake five minutes. This step may well take me beyond five minutes of being awake, perhaps even ten.

Step 4
At this point, assuming I’ve made it this far, I will pull on my leggings and tank-top, go pee then brush my teeth and head straight for my yoga mat.

Step 5
I can now begin my practice.

Step 6
This is the best one – lying down in Savasana, delighting in the satisfaction and relief (physical and mental) of knowing I did it!

These steps may or may not work. The lazy-lolly part of me may well laugh at the little water bottle and sneakily persuade me to forget it and just get back to sleep a.s.a.p. Or having sprayed my face with cold water I may well curse and swear and then simply dry it off and get back into bed. Or, having sprayed my face, got dressed and stepped onto my mat, I may find I’m genuinely too tired and weary for the practice and quit half-way through and pull my yoga-blanket over me and go to sleep. On my mat! It’s happened once before (sleeping yoga – none of the benefits of yoga but all of the benefits of snuggling up and sleeping). There’s no way to know yet.

But I will write an up-date soon and share how it went. It may take time to rebuild my precious morning yoga practice, one that used to be so rhythmical, so resolute and firm and unquestioned – get up, get dressed, do yoga – but even if it takes weeks or months to get back to that stage, I will keep on trying.

Because I realized these past few days why I love my practice so much (even though it’s so hard sometimes it makes me cry): Yoga always leaves my body feeling charged and alive. Sure it may also feel a bit limp, weary and tired initially, especially if I’ve had a strenuous session, but the next day I can feel my body – there’s a strong powerful energy in it that I miss when I’m not practicing.

My body without my yoga practice feels stale and dull, lacking fire and power; my body with yoga feels sore and aching but fully alive, brimming with the raw sensations of respectfully pushing my limits each morning in what I can do, how far my muscles can stretch, how strong they are, how deep I can keep the breath, how quiet I can make the mind. Yoga wakes me up on the most basic and physical level as well as the deeper more subtle aspects of the practice.

I love yoga – you may not have realized! – and I’m going to get that regular morning practice back. For now though, I’m about to go home after a day at work and a couple hours of writing and roll out my mat for an evening session. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m going to attempt my spritzing-the-face exercize. Will it work and get me onto my mat at 6 am? We’ll just have to wait and see.