Summer solstice

Happy Summer Solstice!

Today is the longest day of sun of the year! I'm currently soaking up some rays through my coat of SPF and thanking the universe for such beautiful weather after, what felt like, the longest, coldest, iciest winter of my life. 

Today is also the start of something I'm calling, The Summer of Betterment. 

After five years of post-secondary education, five years of essays and editing and not enough time focused on my mental, physical, and emotional well-being, I've decided I need to let myself grow and heal again. To do this I've laid out goals that involve some of my favourite pastimes and I'm going to use them to become better over the course of the next three months. It's almost like my own "Happiness Project."

I'm going to:

• read (six books; one every two weeks)

• cook (try one new recipe each week)

• do more yoga (work on improving three poses - tree, headstand, king pigeon - and track my progress)

• other tasks (undecided; maybe try a new hobby or clean out my closest, for example)

To kick off The Summer of Betterment I have my "before" yoga pictures:

To improve these postures I will attend one yoga class a week and practice twice a week at home. These pictures also show me how I can improve. For example, I can tell that my king pigeon does not only need backbend work, but I also need to get my hips closer to the ground. In my headstand I don't only need to work on getting my legs straighter, but my back needs to straighten so that my legs can natural life. 

I'm going to research some helpful poses and cannot wait to see how I progress over the course of this summer.

How do you better yourself mentally, physically, or emotionally?