What a great topic!  To me this is about ‘life-long learning.’  For those of you who are not so familiar with the term,  it basically means that even after you graduate from university (or not), you never stop challenging yourself to study new things and learn new activities such as playing the guitar or bungee jumping.  It is the opposite of coming home from a boring everyday job and plonking yourself down in front of the TV with a beer. Nor does it mean taking up some new hobby or interest after you retire, although that is a very important thing to do.  In this case, the action is not too late, but the attitude is!  ‘Life-long learning’ is important because it is about happiness.  True happiness is not found in being comfortable and sticking to safe daily routines. It can only really be found in overcoming challenges and realizing our potential to do new things, sometimes finding within us potential we did not realize existed.

So, this year my challenge will be to do yoga everyday as part of my goal to lose another 12 kg (I already lost 35) and be as fit as possible. I have always had a vague idea in my mind that yoga was interesting and the kind of exercise I can do. (I don’t like ball sports and running is just too hard when you get older and your knees are not so good.). So, I started in a very casual way, following the recommendation of a colleague to use ‘Yoga with Adrienne’ on youtube. I could see straight away she was a great teacher with a well-deserved following all over the world. I started trying different lessons to see what suited me until I settled on one perfect 11 minute wake up routine.  You don’t need to be strong or do lots of press ups, but I did notice that these kind of movements appeared once or twice in the routines done yoga style.  I had a feeling that if I did the routine everyday it would really start to build up muscle over the long-haul although clearly it would not magically make me more ripped like doing cross-training or other really physically oriented exercise.  I was very happy to find this was true and that I am feeling the return of muscles that have long been underused (although gardening is hard work!). Then my wife started getting interested and we did a few routines together.  That was fun so we started doing 2 or even  3 of the short routines together in the morning and at night.  Now we have bought yoga mats and enjoy spending time together on something we love.

So, in conclusion, I would say that I am not only going to try and do yoga everyday this year, but for every year of my life that I have left.  It is definitely added ’quality time’ to my life!