Well, our 60 Day Challenge is complete, and it was a great success. For the uninitiated, in order to finish the Challenge you had to complete 60 Bikram yoga classes in 60 days. Not easy, but we have some strong students. If you navigated over here from the BYC website, you know that we had 19 people sign up, and six who successfully completed the challenge. Props and congrats to Dora Daniel, Shannon Stevens, Anne Kim, Pat Kim, Rose Hinebaugh, and studio director Kat Kelley-Chung, who all completed the challenge. A special mention for Taneka Johnson, who got the flu in the final two weeks,
but still completed 42 classes by doing doubles and triples, to make up for classes she missed while out of town. You'll get it next time!We raised $300 for Riders for Health, a non-profit that provides motorcycles to health care workers in Africa. They've got a great program over at Riders, and make a real impact on people's lives. I've travelled to some remote areas in a few different countries in Africa, and I can see where one person on a small motorbike can make a real difference. Here is a note from Rachel Harrington, the fundraising manager there:
Dear André and Kat,
It is lovely to hear from you again - and thank you for the fantastic news about the success of your 60 Day Challenge! Please also pass on our thanks to all the students who managed to complete the challenge. They must be very dedicated!
On behalf of all the team here at Riders I would like to thank you both for your continued support of our work. $300 is enough to provide over 400 families with a year of health care visits, so your efforts really will be making a huge difference to families across Africa.
Thanks again for your kind support, and I will look forward to speaking to you soon.
Rachel
It is lovely to hear from you again - and thank you for the fantastic news about the success of your 60 Day Challenge! Please also pass on our thanks to all the students who managed to complete the challenge. They must be very dedicated!
On behalf of all the team here at Riders I would like to thank you both for your continued support of our work. $300 is enough to provide over 400 families with a year of health care visits, so your efforts really will be making a huge difference to families across Africa.
Thanks again for your kind support, and I will look forward to speaking to you soon.
Rachel
To see more photos from the challenge, go to our flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/achungphoto/.
Our next Challenge should be even more successful, so we're counting on all our students!
-André
3 comments:
First of all, with a lifetime of messages around “personal achievement” driven into my psyche by teachers and family and fueled by colleagues, all someone had to say was the word “challenge” and I wanted to take it on! But, true to my Aries nature, I tend to jump in now and ask questions later: I had no idea how long 60 days would be! Interestingly enough, The Challenge came at a time in my life that allowed me to take on the task and succeed: 1st quarter, usually very busy for my consulting practice, was eerily quiet! I had very few client commitments and more free time at my disposal than any self-employed person should be comfortable with!! (smile)
But, The Universe knows best because the down time in my business allowed me to 100% focus on the yoga, the discipline of 60 days of continuous practice and gave me lots of room to pamper myself on the days when I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. My body ached probably 57 of the 60 days and I often found myself tearing up like a 3 year-old in the mornings, thinking “I don’t wanna do yoga today!” And, with Mercury in retrograde during a part of The Challenge, the yoga was one more “contract” I’d created for myself where some days, the “fine print” of the commitment left me dazed and confused as agreements and communications often are during that celestial alignment!
At the end of it all, The 60-day Challenge got me through 2 of the most difficult months for me each year: I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder so trying to do ANY kind of physical exercise in the Winter requires effort on my part. The constant, but gentle discipline of the yoga really helped me combat the lethargy I generally feel during January and February when some days it seemed like the sun would never come out again!
I am only now really beginning feel the physical benefits: there are some challenges that I face as a woman over 40 face that I kid you not, have LITERALLY disappeared since I started doing yoga. My sleep and skin have improved and niggling aches & pains I had from a time when I ran regularly have gone away. And, even though I am still pursuing my weight loss goals, there are some foods I no longer crave, which goes a long way to helping my progress on that front! When you see those kind of physical results with no medication or doctor’s visits, the whole experience is motivational unto itself! I’m sure I’m not the only student who has recently said to someone: “yoga will fix that!” And for me, there were small successes along the way with some of the postures that make me a believer in the possibilities of transformation.
The people aspect of The Challenge has been the biggest learning for me: all my instructors during The Challenge: Kat, Misty, Nikki, Sue, taught me something different through their various teaching styles. I was able to use in one class what I learned in another: Kat’s way of guiding the class through the Final Savasana was and is always something I look forward to – Nikki’s “keep it real” approach to the yoga gave me permission to be “mad with my practice” some days, but never give up doing it. Misty’s physical appearance is inspirational and gets me really excited about the possibilities of what yoga can do for my body and Sue’s instructional style, an deceptively easygoing, but very disciplined guidance, made getting through “Hump Day Wednesdays” each week possible. I really admire the way each of these instructors “live” their yoga practice. You can see it in their demeanors, their physical bodies, their cool yoga gear and the enthusiasm they each have and share about living the life of a yogi. When you see each of these teachers “present and accounted for,” you can’t help but show up each day!
There were so many students, some Challenge participants and some not, whose commitment to their personal practice was motivational for me. I admire their strength, flexibility and discipline as they ready themselves for class and move through their postures. Rhonda, Ann, Pat, Sabrina, Tanika: you ladies are ALL that!
So I close with a special thanks to Kat for her studio: she has created a yoga community that is supportive, non-judgmental, open and inviting (anytime I can wear a midriff to class without even a hint of a “pack” of any kind [2-, 4-, 6-] means I’m REALLY comfortable!). Kat’s professional commitment to having a studio that is open no matter what (ice, snow, absence of heat in the yoga room) was another reason I was able to complete The Challenge. Her personal style and “way of being” creates an energy that draws many different types of humans, but all with a shared focus around the yoga. The energy of that shared commitment is felt from the very first Pranayama breathing movement: when 15+ pairs of elbows stretch simultaneously to the ceiling, it is a collective request to The Universe to transform us – even if only for 90 minutes. In return, The Universe invites us to be “yogis for life.” The end of The Challenge and the beginning of March ushered in a new level of activity for me: an influx of new clients, new time commitments and the call to integrate and balance my life as a yogi with the life I had before I made this commitment. For me personally, the next “Challenge” has begun . . . .
Want to have a life and body altering experience? Then sign up for the next 60 day challenge, and do all you can to stick with it! I started sporadically attending Bikram classes in September 2007 at the Cockeysville studio - a long commute from Columbia, so I was thrilled when Kat opened the Columbia studio in November, just a few minutes from my home. As background, serious shoulder surgery almost seven years ago had left my right shoulder nearly useless, and my nephew, a Bikram instructor, told me that Bikram yoga would very possibly give me some flexibility back in my arm and shoulder. Since I'd tried about everything else, from physical therapy to regular exercise, I figured why not try this too. I started coming almost daily after Kat opened in November and decided to try for the 60 day Challenge. After completing the challenge (I managed 61 classes in 60 days from Jan. 1st to Feb 29th-doing some doubles on weekends to make up for missed days during the week), my shoulder is close to 100%. To be honest, most of the postures are still hard for me, and progress is slow to come, but in the 60 day challenge especially, I saw some slight improvement in each pose, and significant improvement in others (I can almost get into Camel and Fixed Firm now, and at the start of the challenge, I couldn't begin to do either one - they might not be perfect poses, but at least they're a lot better now than in January when the challenge started). So make that commitment next time you have the opportunity, and you'll be very thankful when you look back after you complete it, and see how much you've improved! I can almost guarantee it! Namaste, Rose H.
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