My 2015 Yoga Practice Thus Far + prAna & Fit Approach’s #TaketheLeap Challenge

Happy February!

Whew! I can’t believe that the first month of the year is already gone, but I feel like my year is off to a great start. On the fitness front, my 2015 has included a lot of movement and a lot of yoga practice.

At the egging on of my sister, whose in training for her yoga certification, I decided to take part in an Instagram yoga challenge throughout January. Basically every day of the month, the challenge hosts – both amazing, beautiful yogis – would post a photo or video of them doing a yoga pose, and everyone participating in the challenge would post a photo of their best attempt at doing the same pose. Deemed the #BeStrongin2015 challenge, I certainly felt strong & healthy practicing these poses, and I enjoyed the sense of community I felt via social media sharing my journey and checking out everyone else’s photos.

I thought it’d be fun to share some of my favorite poses, plus some of the ones I found to be the toughest from the challenge, so here we go!

{Crow Pose} This move is one that I practice often, and it was fun doing it in random places, like on a huge rock while hiking as pictured above. 

{Samanasana} I love a good stretch, and this pose certainly gives your legs one! Laying on your bottom arm gives it an added balance challenge as well. I was at the dog beach the day this was the pose to practice, and as you can see, Harley wanted to steal the show! She jumped in front of me at the last minute to start digging, hence her sandy mug and tongue.

{Side Crow} As stable as I am in regular crow, side crow is another story. I had never tried it before this challenge, and it definitely takes some getting used to, but now that I’ve been doing it, it’s coming more naturally. Practice, practice, practice!

{Fallen Angel} This is a fun pose, as you first need to balance in side crow, but then feel a sense of relief as you tilt your head down and shoot your leg up for Fallen Angel. 
{Headstands} I usually don’t practice headstands a ton, but in January, I was headstanding like crazy! I’m not wonderful at them and don’t find them to feel all that great on my head and neck (hence why I don’t do unsupported ones), but I do think I improved over the course of the month at headstand variations….

{Tripod headstand}

And there were even {handstands}.

Try holding one of these for awhile, it’s tough! I also practiced doing a 60-second handstand hold against my fence for stabilization. Trust me, a minute goes by slow!

{Tuck Handstand} I practiced this one by first starting in a handstand against the fence, then bringing my legs down slowly to a tuck hold. It takes a lot of control and core strength!

{Arm Pressure Pose} I really enjoyed doing more poses pushing up on my hands (well, my wrists didn’t enjoy it but besides that I did!), and I learned that I can do more of these types of poses than I would have guessed. I learned that it’s all about learning your upper body forward and engaging the core.

{Wheel Pose} I always enjoy a good heart opening backbend, and am playing around more with variations of it – including holding one leg up for awhile, and bringing my arms closer into my legs.

Note the dingo butt photobomb!

And now onto the toughies… which {Eka Pada Koundinyasana} definitely is to me. Straightening the legs in this is challenging, and I totally face planted into this field attempting this pose a few times!

{Baby Crow} This one wasn’t hard for me to get into, but it definitely hurt the back of my arms! I had never tried it before, and I find it to be a cute looking little pose.

{Astavakrasana} Just getting my leg to sit over my shoulder, which we did in several of the challenge poses, proves to be tough for me. I want to practice doing this pose more and focusing on bringing my left elbow more inwards. 

{Flying Pigeon} During the month, I developed a huge nasty bruise on one of my triceps from practice these types of poses where I’m putting so much weight on the back of my arm! I haven’t been able to straighten the “flying” leg yet, but I’m working on getting there.

{Firefly} I think that the concentrated look on my face in the above Firefly pose says it all – whew, it takes some serious strength to do this pose! I want to work towards getting my feet to point more upwards and sort of sit into it more. 

{Jumping Through} Yea…. there was no jumping through from an elevated seated position for me on this day! I’m actually a little confused as to how people can even move their bodies through the first position to the second without having their feet touch the ground, and am convinced that my arms just aren’t long enough. 🙂    

{Scorpion Handstand} This pose is one I’ve tried before, but have always found it to be uncomfortable. It feels like it stretches my back out a little too much, but I’m probably just pushing my limits perhaps a bit more than I should. While some people can get their feet to touch their heads in this pose, the above photo was the best I could do. I may try to get more comfortable in this pose moving forward. As you can see, Harley was pretty interested in what I was up to! I enjoyed pushing myself in my January challenge so much, that I applied and was chosen to be a leader in a new challenge starting today! I’m collaborating with Fit Approach and activewear line prAna for their Take the Leap challenge.

The challenge is simply to practice yoga each and every day from February 2nd to March 8th. I’ll be posting daily photos of my yoga practice on my Instagram and Twitter and hashtagging them with #TakeTheLeap, and I would love for you to participate too! Simply post photos on social media of you doing your favorite yoga poses, use the challenge hashtag, and you’ll have a chance to win $500 worth of prAna gear. That’s a lot of fun yoga clothes my friends! I’ll also be doing a post later in the month on the fun poses I’m trying, as well as to document some of the progress I’m making in my yoga practice.

If you’re not familiar with prAna, I highly suggest you hop on over to their site to check out their clothes. Not only are their clothes so cute (I want it all!), the company focuses on sustainability and makes their products in environmentally conscious ways (more on that here). I always like supporting companies that are committed to not only creating products that are great for us consumers, but are also conscious of the impact they have on the world around them. You can also use the following code for 15% off your entire prAna purchase: psps15FLF

Tell me… What are your favorite yoga poses? What poses do you find to be challenging? Have you ever participated in a social media yoga challenge?