4 and a half years ago, I was one year postpartum and still out of sorts with motherhood. I was finally in a place where I wanted to take better care of myself, but I had no idea how.
I got on my yoga mat pretty much every day, but I rarely made it to an actual class.
I started reading a book that I loved, but I never got more than a few pages in before I passed out facedown in my book.
I was getting outside most days, but only because the dog needed a walk.
I was trying to juggle being a work-at-home mom with responsibly caring for my still-new-to-me baby, while also trying to make sure I didn’t completely lose my mind every single day. My success rate was somewhere between 40 and 50%.
I rarely left my house because my entire world was there. Milly was still tiny and I can do a lot of my work from home. And when I did leave the house it always felt like a struggle.
I was running again, but I felt like I needed more strength training in my life and more diversity of movement. I couldn’t afford a personal trainer and the idea of going to the gym before Nathan left for work felt impossible, so instead I joined Grokker.
Grokker is an online fitness platform that one of my mentors recommended for at-home workouts. I hadn’t done anything other than yoga and running for years and my body was craving change. I had no idea where to start, so I turned to fitness professionals because they are experts.
I needed to be instructed and I needed guidance on how to progress when I was ready.
I needed to be led through a sequence and encouraged along.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have stuck with it.
If you’re a yogi who has always struggled with creating a home practice, this likely sounds really familiar.
You love how going to a class makes you feel, but you can’t get to class nearly as often as you would like to.
And you’ve tried doing yoga at home, but often you unroll your mat and just stand there, wondering what to do until eventually you give up.
When you go to a yoga class, the whole point is to be told what to do. Or at the very least to follow along with someone else’s plan and make good choices.
The whole point of practicing yoga at home is to choose your own yoga adventure.
I enjoy going to yoga classes, especially with teachers I really like, but more often than not, I’d prefer to do my own practice in my own house on my own time.
I love the opportunity to move and be creative and play and listen to music and stop and start all over again. And I often know exactly what I want to do.
This is not the case when it comes to exercise.
I mean, I know the basics (squats, jacks, kicks, planks, skaters) but I’d much rather someone else come up with the sequence and the timing and just give me something I can follow along with easily.
Trying to create my own HIIT practice is stressful and not as satisfying.
That’s why I use Grokker.
It’s also what inspired me to create my own online community where I could support other moms similarly through yoga and self-care.
This community is the Conscious Healthy Collective.
I know how hard it can be to make it to a yoga class. You have to coordinate schedules, sometimes get a babysitter, make sure you have clean yoga clothes, make sure the class you like is actually happening that night….there’s a lot. And usually, you’re right about to get out the door and your kid pukes.
I also know how hard it can be to roll out your yoga mat at home with no actual plan. If you’re not sure what you want to do and you’re not quite as comfortable just “going with the flow” on your yoga mat, your practice might stop before it even starts.
Suddenly doing yoga seems really hard and frustrating and even a little stressful.
I don’t want yoga to feel stressful or hard. That’s sort of the opposite of how it’s supposed to feel. Yoga can and should be challenging, but the idea of getting to a yoga class or getting on your yoga mat shouldn’t make you break out into stress hives.
I want to make it as easy as possible for you to do yoga whenever you want.
I want there to be fewer barriers between you and your yoga mat.
I want you to feel like your yoga practice is a part of your regular, healthy self-care practice.
In my yoga and self-care membership community, you don’t have to leave your house to do yoga and since you’re at home, you can even do it with your kids/dogs/parrots crawling all over you, if that’s your only option.
The classes are also “bite-size” compared to classes at your favorite studio or gym, clocking in at either 15 or 30minutes long.
There’s not guess work. No uncertainty. You get to move through creative, unique, and diverse sequences that will help you build strength, create greater mobility, and most importantly, have fun.
Some of the classes will be more dynamic. Others will be more mellow. You still get to choose your own adventure.
Best of both worlds!
Restarting a regular exercise routine was what kicked off my passion for self-care and my desire to take better care of myself. My hope is that having easy access to fun, funky, creative, and intelligent yoga classes does the same for you.
If you’d like to join the Collective, you can try it out for FREE for 14 days.
