Just over a month ago, I felt like I was in sort of a workout rut. Walking out of a hot yoga class one night, I was stopped by a friend who asked me if I had heard about the 40 Days program. As in, yoga guru Baron Baptiste’s 40 Days to Personal Revolution. My local studio, Lyon’s Den Yoga, was launching a group challenge to follow along with Baptiste’s program, so I decided to join.
To say that the challenge involved a lot of commitment is a total understatement. You’re doing yoga six days a week throughout the 40-day program, and the duration of time you spend doing yoga gradually increases, culminating at 90 minutes each day. The same goes for meditation; starting at five minutes in week one, you meditate twice a day, and you’re meditating for 30 minutes by the program’s end. There’s also required journaling and reading the book the challenge is based on. There are also excavation questions you answer that help you learn about yourself, as well as in-person meetings every Monday.
I know. It sounds like a lot — because it was. But I felt like getting involved would push me past my comfort zone and would be a good chance to work on myself. What seriously intimidated me, though, was the meditation. I’ve tried to get on board with meditation a handful of times, and it has just never stuck.
But I went for it, and although it was nothing like what I expected, I learned a whole lot about myself in the process. Here are the four biggest lessons I learned from spending 40 days investing in myself:
Doing hot yoga regularly makes me feel better than any other workout
For me, hot yoga feels like the ultimate reset. For instance, if I’ve gone out and housed a few slices of pizza with girlfriends, hitting up a 60-minute flow the next morning makes me feel like I’m sweating all those toxins out. Sweating all that out day after day throughout this program was a recipe for a great-feeling body.
Getting to the studio and taking classes felt more rewarding than logging a flow in at my apartment. I was carving out part of my day to do something special for myself, which upped my attitude in general. Plus, the results kept me coming back, too. More than any almost other steady workout routine, I find that all of those Chaturanga push-ups make my arms look top-notch.
Meditation takes practice
We’ve already established that I didn’t walk into this challenge as a meditation guru. Friends of mine who were good at meditation (which meant that they actually enjoyed it and didn’t count down until its end immediately after beginning a session) told me that, with time, it would become easy and I’d actually enjoy it. Or so they said.
I didn’t really believe them, but still, I persisted. The structure of, firstly, learning how to meditate for just five minutes at the end of my day was a good base. From the get-go, I used the meditation app Headspace as a guide. Cofounder and former Tibetan Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe voices the meditations, and his voice is ridiculously therapeutic. So much so, in fact, that the nighttime meditation occasionally would put me to sleep.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that, during the first several days, meditating felt like a total chore. Even when the session was only five minutes, my mind started racing. By the end of the first week, though, I caught myself getting through 10 minutes of meditation without counting down until the end. I felt more relaxed. Like the daily yoga, I felt proud that I was taking some time for myself. I learned to actually focus on my breath.
