What stops you to do yoga or exercise?
What stops you to do Yoga or exercise or any form of exercise? Or in other words why we do not do yoga or exercise? What stops us?
Even though you commit every night that from tomorrow morning I will start my workout, I will do Yoga or exercise for sure, you do all possible activities to prepare and even put an alarm but next morning the result is nil. You end up finding all happy necessary excuses to avoid paying attention to the self. Your exercise regime never starts. Why does this happen?
It’s because you do prepare yourself but that is not enough. Your happy excuses are stronger than you.
Let’s see what are the possible excuses are
- We don’t have habit of exercise.
- We can’t wake up on time.
- We don’t know what to do
- What if we do something wrong?
- The body doesn’t have energy to exercise.
- We don’t sleep well and because of that we don’t feel good after waking up in the morning.
And even when are willing to overcome all these excuses still the end result is zero, why?
Because your approach has too many expectations in a very less time. So the actions are not supporting your desire to change your habits. These are some of the common thoughts that might come to your mind-
- We expect sudden change in our routine
- We put an unrealistic alarm time.
- We commit to big achievements
- We don’t think of what is suitable for us
So, what to do?
- Do not expect sudden changes in your routine. In fact slow and small goals are best.
- Don’t put an alarm that is too early. Whatever time you usually wake up, put a practical alarm that is 50 minutes earlier so your mind and body can support you.
- Choose a beginner’s workout which is 30 mins to start with.
- Find a warm up routine and then get into the full workout.
The idea of warming up is an integral part of my practice and it is something I believe in deeply. It is essential to warm up your body and it is similar to the idea of heating up a metal to reshape it. Your body has created many patterns through repetitive movements and it takes time to open up the body and for that, a slow aware and conscious warm up is essential.
There are different ways of warming up the body and in our Indian culture we have the habit of taking a bath in morning before yoga, why?
Bathing is like a warm up in itself. Taking a shower makes all your muscles move and changes your body temperature. It prepares your body and mind to move in accordance with what you want to do.
Try Sukshma vyayam (Small Joint Exercises) and try doing a few rounds of Surya Namaskars (Sun Salutation) as it is one of the best ways to warm up the entire body creating a harmony between body and breath.
So next time when you feel that you don’t have the energy to do a full workout, just start with the warm up exercises and see how the body will come alive and you will naturally feel like doing more. The warm up will lead to doing more asanas and poses and with time, you will find that it becomes easy to practice and thoroughly enjoyable!
So start with small goals, stay consistent and then slowly see the changes manifest in your life. All the best! Stay strong, stay active.