Day 30: Final Savasana

Courtesy Yoga Spy.

Last night a group of us were chatting in the Back Bay Bikram lobby after doing the 7:30 class. One fellow doing the 30 Day Challenge had just done a double--4:30 class, break for an hour or so, then the 7:30. He had to do a double tonight to finish with 30 classes in 30 days.

A lady friend of his said, "So you just have tomorrow? You did it!" She meant well, but no one on the verge of accomplishing something wants to hear that it's already done. Not until it's really, truly over.


A few moments later, I mentioned that I was also doing the 30 Days. And the lady said, again, "You did it!" And I replied, "Please don't say that. I haven't done it yet. I've got one more day."


It brought me back to day 1 of the challenge, a month ago. Same lobby, only this time before class. Dan, the teacher for that first class, was telling the young lady who just signed in, "Why don't you check off today before you go in? You know you're going to do it."


Sure, we know we're going to do it, just like last night I knew I would do tonight's class and finish the challenge. But I didn't want to check out mentally a day early; I didn't want to mark this one in the W column until the clock read 0:00. Not for any one class, and certainly not for the very last one. But at 7:30 tonight, the clock expired, the last knee locked, the last breath exhaled, and now I can say it: I did it.

What does that mean, exactly? I don't know. I can see the physical changes--hey, where's the beer gut? Did I actually have abdominal muscles hiding in there all this time?--and measure the obvious progress I made in many of the postures. I can applaud having the wherewithal to show up every day, including a five day stretch where I hovered between "not exactly sick" and "not exactly well," and consequently felt a little weird during much of those classes. But what will I end up carrying out of the hot room? I'll have to wait and see on that.

It’ll be nice to have my evenings back; even with two early departures each week to grab the 4:30 class, and a pair of days off in the middle, I felt like I was getting home late every night. Maybe the expenditure of effort created that feeling, or maybe the fact Daylight Savings kicked in and brought night down early; whether I was at home at 7 or at 9, I often didn’t feel like doing much. Maybe I felt I only had the energy to concentrate on one project at a time, and the 30 Day Challenge was it. I was rarely creative over the last month, and felt like a partial friend and husband. I’ll be happy returning to life as a fully committed, creative human being.

I think of this time after the challenge as a sort of Savasana. I’ll take at least a couple of weeks away, absorb the benefits of what I just did, and figure out what else I may have gained, and what I could do better. But for a little while, I’m just going to lie back and be happy that I’ve finished. Day 30 and the challenge are in the books.

Connect to the purring, y’all.

Namaste,

Scott