And this is how I did:
Monday 28 Feb '22
Meditation ✔️
Breathing ✔️
Prayer ✔️
Water ✔️
Physical Activity ✔️
Personal Goal 1 - sleep earlier✔️
Personal Goal 2 - read before bed❌
Write a post & submit to Dreemport ✔️
As you can see, a great start to my week... it was't like that every day, but not through lack of trying 😝
I did a 25 minute Joe Wicks HIIT session and 10 minutes of warm up/cool-down stretching today and I felt positively pooped by the end haha, but I did it! I loved that it included squats, punches, and knee raises with outstretched legs (kinda like high front kicks)... these are all actions I am very familiar with from martial arts so those came naturally and it was awesome to get back into that zone. The other exercises consisted of lunges so very much like the yoga exercises that I have done previously. What a win - getting to do some martial arts and yoga as part of a HIIT session🙌
I drank 1.5 litres of water with a squeeze and wedge of lemon
Wrote a post for Dreemport Sublime Sunday Bike Ride - Getting ready for the Dreemport Challenge
I did @blackdaisyft 's breathing exercise from her post A guide for breathing | The importance of our diaphragm muscle
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I did the exercise sitting up on my office chair, on purpose, as I wanted to see, and feel the difference between doing it sitting up and lying down! It definitely felt that there was constriction to my breathing in that I could not breathe in as deeply as I would have liked to, in a seated position. I also found that the massage technique discussed by Margarida does not work very well for me sitting up as I couldn't get any depth under my ribs. Let's see what tomorrow brings with doing these exercises lying down 🤗
Finally, my bedtime routine hehe. So this is where the personal goal comes in... you see I am terrible for getting a good night's sleep because as a Mom of 2 boys I am constantly on the go around them during the day, around my work, their school and activities and standard adult/parental responsibilities, and I only get me time after they have gone to bed at night...so I tend to stay awake late...ahem... sometimes too late so that I don't get more than about 4 hours sleep... but I don't want to sacrifice my time to be me... however I realise I need more balance if I want to have a healthy mind, body, and soul and sleep is super important for all of that. So my personal goal for this first week was to get into the habit of going to bed earlier (between 12 am and 1 am - yup that's early for me 😂) and to try to get back to reading an actual book for 15 minutes before going to sleep, then once I have those habits established in week 1, to add another personal goal for week 2 onwards that I can actually devote time to doing... hehe and this one is the same as @blackdaisyft's goal... learning to play the guitar.
I went to bed early, sat and did 15 minutes of meditation, 5 minutes of prayer, and went to sleep. I felt tired and I thought
rather sacrifice my second personal goal of reading for 15 minutes and listen to my body and go to sleep!!!
Tuesday 1 Mar '22
Meditation ✔️
Breathing ✔️
Prayer ❌
Water ✔️
Physical Activity ✔️
Personal Goal - sleep earlier✔️
Personal Goal 2 - read before bed ❌
Write a post & submit to Dreemport ✔️
I did the same 25 minute Joe Wicks HIIT session with 10 minutes of warmup/cool down. My youngest, Jack (9) joined me today and we had fun together❣️ He was super enthusiastic; it was awesome 😎
Drank 1.25 litres of water with a squeeze and wedge of lemon.
Wrote a post for Dreemport Another Month, Another Hive Power Up Day... and Covid round 2!!!
Did the breathing exercises lying down this time, preceded by the massage. Much better! I could get under the ribcage with the massage and then the breathing felt far more effective and deep.
I fell asleep during meditation and so although I know I did at least 5 minutes of the 15 minute session, I didn't complete the session, and because I fell asleep, no prayers 👀🤨😔 or reading but I did get to bed early... mmm consolation prize anyone? 😅
Wednesday 2 Mar '22
Meditation ✔️
Breathing ✔️
Prayer ✔️
Water ✔️
Physical Activity ✔️
Personal Goal - sleep earlier✔️
Personal Goal 2 - read before bed ❌
Write a post & submit to Dreemport ✔️
I needed to change a few things up...I couldn't fall asleep again before I had finished my list of daily objectives!🙄😂
So let's see, I drank 1.5 litres of water, did Joe Wicks HIIT session (chose a different set to vary things) and found that I was getting into a rhythm quicker and doing a bit more than the first two days within the same time limits. It was a nice change (note to self to change things up more often... haha... and live a little lol). I did my Dreemport post Wednesday (erm... Thursday) Walk Along The Thames - Restoring the Soul
I went to bed early again but this time said my prayers first❣️ (see that wasn't so difficult to make sure the priorities were rearranged), then did my breathing exercises lying down again - the breathing is getting easier to practise and is more controlled. I finished up with meditation. Did you get that? I say finished up because once again... I fell asleep before the 15 minute guided meditation was complete and didn't get to read 😝
Thurday 3 Mar '22
Meditation ✔️
Breathing ✔️
Prayer ✔️
Water ✔️
Physical Activity ❌
Personal Goal - sleep earlier✔️
Personal Goal 2 - read before bed ❌
Write a post & submit to Dreemport ✔️
The wheels fell off a bit today, you will see why if you read my Dreemport post for the day haha Getting Ready To Fly...
I did manage to drink 1.25 litres of water, and write my Dreemport post, but by the time I just squeaked the post into Dreemport before midnight UTC, I was too tired to do any physical activity. I did say my prayers, do my breathing exercises, and meditate, but I did not get to sleep early 👀🙄... yup...I fell off the wagon big time and engaged on Hive for a while before I finally headed to bed for 4 hours of sleep before I had to get up and do the day job... sigh... in my defence I had had a crazy busy day and I was craving me time.
Friday 4 Mar '22
Meditation ✔️
Breathing ✔️
Prayer ✔️
Water ✔️
Physical Activity ✔️
Personal Goal - sleep earlier✔️
Personal Goal 2 - read before bed ✔️
Write a post & submit to Dreemport ✔️
Finishing the week on a high🙌🙌🙌 A full house of achieved objectives.
All goals achieved for the day. Did some reshuffling... if I can't read just before bed because I'm too tired, then I must obviously have to read earlier when I am not tired! Simples, right? 😍😂
As of writing this post I have had 1 litre of water, done my HIIT session, breathing exercises, meditation and prayer. After submitting this post I will start my reading... I am reading this:
Week summary:
Right so 4/5 days I did 25 minute HIIT workouts plus extra 10minutes of stretching...so does that sorta count overall as covering my 100 minutes of exercise for the week lols? Otherwise I missed 1 days of prayer and 4 days of reading but I feel in myself that I have accomplished the essence of my goals overall, although I will try to achieve 100% on all 5 days next week.
Next week I will also intro the guitar. Honestly, it is something I have wanted to do for so so very long now and I actually own two guitars myself... I bought them a couple of years ago ... but then ...life... and excuses...mmm... yes... because we always have a choice right?! But these are beauties, right? It's a sin not to play them!!!
I had already resolved at the beginning of this year to start learning how to play these beautiful instruments and weirdly enough I ordered a PDF beginners guide from my son's guitar teacher before I knew what this Dremport Challenge was all about... and then like a day or two later... helloooo Dreemport challenge... timing, right???😁
Anyway I am taking a slow stepped approach to building in my goals as I want to be sure that I manage my energy effectively and don't overcommit myself, to myself, haha, so the guitar gets introduced for week 2... (and then maybe I may need some help haha when I am away in California for 2 weeks... @dreemsteem @bbqgriffinwings to enable me to keep ticking off the objective for the 3rd week of the challenge before the break - a few pointers/tips... cos any learning counts, right?)
A brief note on my personal goals:
The key thing here is balance, not overcommitting my energy; I want to endure, not burn out.
So... establishing good waking and sleeping routines week 1... then once comfortable with that... add in reading daily (I tried that in week one and managed by day 5), learning guitar - maybe once guitar is a daily habit, start learning another foreign language...probably Spanish as my eldest will be learning it soon at High School so it will be nice to learn it alongside him and be able to help him with homework if he is stuck.
Thanks for reading, catch you next week❣️🙏
