Fall Fresh Start Challenge - Day Four

Day 4. 

As we start a new day....take a few moments to consider your month-long fitness and wellness goals and what little steps you can take today that will support these intentions. 
Check your schedule and see when you will get your exercise in. As you prep your lunch or consider breakfast, think about healthy choices and especially how you will get some greens in at every meal. What tasks do you need to accomplish this evening and still get your 6 hours of sleep? 

Today is a longgggg day for me and my family since all three of our children are at baseball and soccer tonight at three different fields. Fitting in a healthy dinner AND getting to bed at a decent hour is a challenge on these days and I'm grateful to have this group going right now to remind me to prepare for the evening now with a plan for food and sleep.

Keep it up friends. The posts are fantastic and the energy of this group is wonderful. We are 4 days in to our 4 weeks. Stay strong, stay focused, keep it fresh. Every day is a new opportunity for Day One. 

#yougotthis
#freshstart

Day 4. Mid-day check in and a brief task:

Full disclosure...I didn't get greens with my breakfast. I did have a huge salad at lunch so I hopefully made up for missing them in my morning meal. If anyone has an interesting/creative way to get greens into a breakfast meal please feel free to share it here so we can all get some ideas.

As we start gaining some momentum here in our 4 week Fresh Start challenge, I'm thinking about the topic I've been teaching in my Duke yoga classes this week:
Brahmacharya.
Brahma-what?! :-) 
"Brah-ma-char-ee-uh" 

This is one of the yoga Yamas and translated, it can mean continence and moderation. Brahmacharya is about finding balance and taking care of the vital energy inside each of us.

• Work hard AND also rest. If we work too much, get little sleep, ignore our bodies, then we get sick or run-down. Right? 
• Eat well...AND not to excess. 
• Socialize and cultivate relationships....AND also save some energy for the relationship with yourself. 

BALANCE.
We have all decided to participate in this challenge for numerous reasons, but most likely the common thread across all of our intentions is one of imbalance. You have lost your drive to work out because of other responsibilities, you gave up eating well, you are too tired, etc. So let's set an intention together that focuses on brahmacharya.

Take a few moments now or this evening to try the following exercise:
Find a comfortable seat (on a chair or the floor), sit tall through your spine, get still, and just breathe. In through the nose and out through the mouth.
After a few rounds of breath, go inside your heart and mind and identify an area of your life that feels out of balance. It could be school, work, family, finances, relationships or something else. Once you identify this aspect, create a positive statement around this idea to bring it into balance ....
For example: "I want to experience balance at my job." "I want to feel balance with my finances." Or maybe it's just: "I want to experience balance in my life."
Once you have this intention, repeat this positive sentence to yourself. Create a quiet meditation and continue to sit with this thought or idea for 5-10 minutes.
Afterwards, write it down and put it somewhere you can see it and reflect on it over the coming days.
Let this positive, balanced statement serve as a mantra you can come back to as you work on your fresh start.