My #TakeTheLeap 30 day Yoga Challenge Experience

It was the end of January when I first wrote about the #TakeTheLeap yoga challenge put on by PrAna and Sweat Pink. You can check out the post here. I decided to participate and take the leap as it was one of my goals for 2015. Now the 30 days have passed and I wanted to share my thoughts on how it went.

First of all, I am not the most flexible person. I have a hard time reaching my toes especially when I'm not warmed up when doing toe touches. Because of this inflexibility and I thought it was boring, I have always avoided yoga. I used to not be a fan of anything yoga until this last summer when I started PiYo. When I saw that yoga can help runners, I became more interested and made it a goal of mine to do it more. 

My main hopes of this challenge were to work on these three things:

1) Flexibility 
2) Learn new poses
3) I would love to learn crow pose. 

This is what my 30 days of yoga looked like. You can also see these pictures on my Instagram.

So what did I get from 30 days of yoga?

I definitely learned a lot! I enjoyed every day doing at least 5 minutes of a pose or poses. I liked how there are so many poses and stretches you can do and the names of them are pretty neat too. A lot of the yoga I did came from Pinterest, or google searches for best poses for runners, and I also got inspiration from other #taketheleap challenge participants on social media along with prAna's #bringingyogaback 12 day challenge. 

What I like about yoga is that it is for all abilities. There are poses for everyone. I also learned that you may be surprised at what you can really do. I tried some poses that I wasn't sure I could do and low and behold I could do them (baby grasshopper, wild thing, and bow pose to name a few). The poses I did may not look perfect in form or alignment, but I got the stretch that I needed and that to me is important. I went as far as I was comfortable and just figured for next time maybe I can push a little more. I found that taking the breaths and pausing relaxes me. Breathing is important and helps with the pose.

I did learn the crow pose! I can't hold it for very long, but I can do it and I am happy about it. I plan to keep practicing so I will be able to hold it a lot longer. I also hope to do a headstand and handstand at some point. See, this is how much I'm enjoying yoga, I'm already setting new goals! :)

As to flexibility, I have noticed a good improvement from where I was at before. I still can't reach my toes comfortably, but I know that with continuous yoga and stretching I will continue to get more flexible. I'm not stopping after this challenge, as I know yoga will help lots with my running.

Would you ever do a yoga challenge? What's your favorite yoga pose?