Today was my first morning of 5 sun salutations. I can already tell that the more I do this, the more I will come to enjoy it, but this morning was a challenge. It was a relatively pleasant 15 minutes, but my mind was at least as reluctant as my body. It has been ages since I had a yoga practice, and needless to say, my muscles have gotten weaker and less flexible, so I went through the practice, I could do a fraction of what I could back in August.

I began by setting an intention for my practice, and thereby, for the day. A few different possibilities passed through my mind, but I kept coming back to one phrase, reluctant to embrace it: Self-acceptance. Before I even brought my palms together in front of my heart, I knew this would be a challenge. But I finally accepted self-acceptance, and kept returning to that phrase/concept throughout the salutations.

My dear friend (and designer of this site), Mel, is currently engaged in a 100 day project geared towards discipline and wellness. She has committed to doing 300 bows every morning in the Dahn Yoga tradition, and is tracking the experience here. I’m slowly reading through her blog and can recognize a lot of overlap, particularly in this post from Day 3.

And so it is that even more challenging that trying to wrangle myself into a half-acceptable downward dog was the experience of accepting that my downward dog, for today, was lousy. Tomorrow it will be less lousy, and yesterday I didn’t attempt it at all. And that it what matters.