The October Chaturanga Challenge!
Plus, Sober October and Low-Tech-Tober
Hi folks, today I want to share with you a little fun challenge I’ve organized to do with some friends and I’d like to invite you to join us this October! It’s called The Chaturanga Challenge, and it begins today. It’s free to do and requires no equipment.
The Chaturanga Challenge is simple. For the entire month of October, once a day, every day, whenever you like, hit the floor or a mat and do as many Chaturangas in a vinyasa flow as you can consecutively until exhaustion. Then jot down how many you did each day.
For those of you unfamiliar with yoga or chaturangas or a vinyasa flow, it is this series of movements, and you do it on a loop until you can’t do another well.
This involves a downward dog to plank to chaturanga, to upward dog, and back to downward dog, then repeat.
I made a printable tracking sheet for the challenge and if you’d also like to use it, you can download it here:
This is what it looks like:
Each day you go down a column and write in the number of chaturangas you did.
Tracking helps with accountability.
You may recognize this sheet from a similar version I did for my 31/30 fitness challenge!
Habit stacking is also a good idea. You may want to plan to do the chaturangas before or after another habit that is already well established, like brushing your teeth or while you wait for your morning coffee to brew, after you check your email, etc. If you poop every day, do it after you poop! Haha. Gotta keep the body fit!
I read a little every day, so before my reading, I will do the chaturangas.
Today, I did six in a row before my arms were really burning and I didn’t think it was wise to continue or my form would suffer. Now, I’ve been doing yoga for years, so don’t worry if you can only do one or two. It takes time to build the required strength, and if you can’t do the “advanced version,” do the beginner version on your knees.
Also, it goes without saying, I’m not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Consult your doctor if needed. Don’t do anything that hurts. Don’t do anything that may cause injury.
If this movement isn’t accessible to you, that’s okay. Studies show there is a benefit to even just imagining yourself doing the movement, so lay down, close your eyes, and imagine yourself doing chaturangas until you lose focus and count how many you could imagine and visualize your body doing.
If you’re seeing this email late, no worries, just start when you can, or double up the first day and do an evening and a morning round.
Sober October
And speaking of keeping the body fit, I also do the Sober October challenge every year, and avoid all alcohol and marijuana for the month of October. I always like to pair this challenge with some sort of movement or health challenge. Last year I did no sugar and walking 30 min a day, if I recall. This year, it’s The Chaturanga Challenge!
Join Me in Tracking our Chaturangas
For my paid VIPer subscribers, if you’d like to be a part of a text message accountability group, shoot me an email or DM and I’ll add you to the text group. Every day we will just check in and share our number or if you don’t want to share the number, you can just send a check mark or an “I did it!”
Bonus Challenge: Low-Tech-Tober
And if yoga isn’t your thing, another October challenge going around is Low-Tech-Tober, where you remove problematic social media apps from your phone for the month of October.
I thought about doing this one too, but since I’ll soon be releasing the audiobook version of my dystopian holiday novel, Acid Christmas, I decided against it, as I’ll need my social media apps to share content about the audiobook release.
But I applaud you if you go for Low-Tech-Tober! You’d be a real G if you did all three challenges, Sober October, The Chaturanga Challenge, and Low-Tech-Tober!
Now You
Does any of this sound appealing to you?
Will you be doing any fall challenges?
Have you heard of any other cool October challenges?
Or do you dislike group challenges? Let me know in the comments!
And happy Fall! (Sure hope the fall weather arrives soon too! It’s still almost 100 degrees here in Florida!)
Finally, I hope everyone survived Hurricane Helene with no major damage and sending love to anyone struggling with flooding and damages. I know from personal experience how devastating and stressful these natural disasters can be.
XXXOOO
Charlotte Dune
This is exactly what I need right now.