30 Life-Enriching Reasons to Join a Virtual Yoga Challenge

The commitment to a daily practice represents your promise to create healthy habits as you get stronger in mind, body, and spirit. 

If you’re not entirely convinced as to why a virtual yoga challenge is for you, here are 30 life-enriching reasons to dedicate yourself to a month of practice.

1. Create a ritual to anchor the day. 

A ritual brings your awareness to the present moment; it’s a way to transform the mundane into something sacred. Rituals don’t have to be fancy. It could be as simple as taking five deep breaths, lighting some incense or a candle, or pausing between each bite of food. The power of ritual is in the presence you bring to the moment—no matter how great or small the action.

2. Initiate a productive habit to enrich your lifestyle.

Setting aside a few minutes for conscious breathing has the power to shift our overall mental, physical, and emotional health. By committing to 30-days of practice, be it meditation or a movement, can transform and enrich your lifestyle by elevating your awareness of your body and mind.

3. Build strength and enhance flexibility.

A month of yoga asana builds strength and enhances flexibility through the postures. Each vinyasa class offers plenty of modifications for participants to add intensity to create more heat. The offering is to observe how you feel and how your body responds to the poses. 

4. Cultivate discipline.

Discipline means you can commit to something and follow it through, which is essential in setting goals. When we commit to our goals and follow through with our intentions, this builds positive self-esteem and inner strength. A strong sense of discipline will help you persevere through challenges. 

5. Discover the power of suppressed emotions.

Emotions live in the body. We revitalize the parts of the body that hold stored emotions through movement. The release of tissues, muscles, and organs may surface emotions such as sadness and fear. Yoga may offer a moment of freedom to clear stuck energy and emotions.

6. Witness the results of your effort.

The calendar and journaling prompts are resources provided in the challenge for you to track your results, specifically how you feel and perceive your practice as we move through the month.

7. Refine and harness your focus.

A skill is a practice that’s been refined over time. This challenge focuses on one thing; making it to your mat. The goal is to do the daily class or take 5-minutes to be conscious of your breath. 

8. Nourish the senses. 

Dance in your body. Breathe deep. Take in the elements around you. Revel in the sight, sound, taste, and smell of your environment. 

9. Explore peak yoga poses.

Vinyasa classes that build to a peak pose mean you’ll get to test your tapas with crow pose, handstand, wheel pose, and other yoga postures to learn about the body and the demands of each pose. 

10. Connect to a community of like-minded practitioners.

Share how you feel and what practices you prefer with a community of yogis worldwide. The challenge supports conversation in the app in the comments and in our private community Facebook Group where practitioners can share feedback, photos, and emoji’s on each day of the challenge. 

11. Hold each other accountable. 

A big part of the challenge is the community support in holding each other accountable as we commit to 30-days of yoga. Posting in the community Facebook Group or sharing your comments in the app holds you accountable to your shared goal. 

12. Embody yoga philosophy.

Through yoga classes that weave in the yoga sutras’ wisdom, embody the philosophy that formed the Asana’s primary practice.

13. Release negative emotions.

Sometimes clearing lethargy and anxiety needs to be expressed through the body; flow through classes to burn off excess energy, and take restorative yin classes to ground and connect to inner calm. The challenge provides the space to honor how you feel and hit reset on whatever you’re feeling that day. 

14. Embrace new challenges.

Especially if you’re new to yoga, a 30 day yoga challenge is a perfect opportunity to push yourself out of your comfort zone in the comfort of your home. Embracing a new pose or style of breathing may show you how capable you are in developing strength and perseverance. 

15. Develop faith in your capability.

It takes courage to try something new. When you accept the challenge and commit to the 30-days, you may feel how your mind and body adapt and receive physical and mental demands. Practitioners of past challenges have said that witnessing their practice’s evolution helped them develop faith in their capabilities. 

16. Trust in your process.

No two people enter and exit a pose the same way. This act is no different from how we live our day-to-day lives. Hopefully, as you move through the 30-days, you begin to trust in your process and celebrate how unique your practice looks and feels each day. 

17. Make space for play.

Idle time is significant to make space for play and daydream. Let yoga become your playground. 

18. Show up for the collective. 

There will be a day (or more) during the challenge you don’t want to practice. Showing up for the community may encourage you to push through mental and physical roadblocks.   

19. Practice the art of devotion.  

When we devote ourselves to someone or something that is not us, it sparks a sense of compassion and curiosity we may lack when considering ourselves. Devote yourself entirely to your commitment to show up, be present, and contribute to the collective to develop Bhakti, the practice of devotion. 

20. Explore all the ways yoga exists off your mat. 

As you develop your practice on the mat, you’ll start to see how yoga benefits your lifestyle off the mat. When we take care of ourselves, we’re better able to tend to others. If you come with us for the challenge, write down how your overall mood and reception of those around you shifts throughout the month.

21. Step out of the mind and into the body.

We tend to live in the busyness of the mind, the constant chatter, and ongoing thoughts. The practice is one place you might release your mind, put it all down, and surrender completely to the body and the ride of the subconscious. 

22. Engage in creative sequences.

The challenge is designed to stress specific muscles on set days, so your body has time to restore and release. Each day offers a different class style such as vinyasa, restorative, Hatha, mantra, and meditation. Varied and creative sequencing means you’ll never be bored or want to check out. 

23. Advance your understanding of yoga asana.

The repetition of yoga poses throughout the challenge is ideal for beginners. Attending to a new skill every day will accelerate your learning and understanding of each pose physically and mentally. 

24. Discuss each class with a group of yogis.

To enhance your learning development, practitioners of the challenge have the option to engage with fellow yogis in the challenge and with Clara in the community Facebook Group. Dissection of poses, questions, and feedback are all welcome and encouraged. 

25. Appreciate your ability to sustain.

Once you stick it out and commit to one thing entirely, it becomes easier to commit yourself fully to your next goal. Sustainability is a skill that you’ll develop during the 30-day challenge. 

26. Let go of what no longer serves.

Surrendering to breath and body is a crucial ingredient in yoga, and it doesn’t always come easily. Letting go takes practice, but the more you can release what doesn’t serve on your yoga mat (for example, negativity or ideas that are not your own), the more you’ll be able to take this practice of surrender off your mat and into the world. 

27. Join a collective where wellness is prioritized.

Talking about health with people who are conscious of feeding their bodies and minds nourishing things will encourage you to do the same. 

28. Release destructive habits.

As you feel the positive results of the practice in mind and body, spending time on destructive habits may be less enticing. Once you start the shift to a more positive and productive lifestyle, you’ll be able to see with more clarity all the ways certain habits may be holding you back. 

29. Welcome the many, multifaceted layers of yourself.  

Yoga reminds us that we are in constant flux. Nothing stays the same, and we receive the practice based on how we are doing on that particular day. Through yoga, we witness our potential for beauty and despair. Yoga teaches us that we can welcome all the aspects of ourselves, especially when we show up feeling anxious, angry, tired, fidgety, and dull. 

30. Celebrate your heart

Yoga reminds us of how to be with ourselves. It’s a space we come back to and remember our inner quiet and how to attune to our body. Through movement, philosophy, and attunement to breath, the practice of yoga may teach us how to come back to our heart and receive all the things that light us up!