Anyone who has walked the spiritual path has no doubt encountered the daily practice or ritual. Whether it is a daily yoga practice, meditation, Tai Chi or prayer, the power of a daily practice is often the lodestone that grounds a practitioner in a deeper understanding of their path. The twists and turns of life often shape our daily rituals by how deeply our attention can be fixed on the practice, the sincerity with which we do it and even whether we do it or not. As in any pursuit there can be dry spells, long periods of questioning the worth of the endeavor, what outcome we actually seek or if the practice is both the destination as much as the journey.
In so many ways, I see more value in daily rituals and practices during challenging times than when things are easy and free flowing. I don't mean your practice should feel difficult all the time because one of the main purposes of any ritual is to leave you fresh and renewed. I do however believe there is a lot of merit to the "pain-in-the-ass" aspects of practice and an underrated value that so many of us miss while we chase the high of spiritual inspiration.
The Main Challenges of Daily Practice
Challenge #1: It's a daily commitment
If you commit to a daily ritual for any length of time, it means you promise yourself to do it every day. Days you feel like it and days you don't. Good days and horrible ones. Days where time is open and stretched out before you, days when every moment is booked and overflowing.
Every damn day.
Why is this valuable?
Anyone reading this is probably lucky enough to have a lot of choices in life. Big choices about what direction to take your career, down to what side dish to have with lunch. We are free to make a million decisions a day and change course at almost any time. The downside to all of these lovely options is that the moment we don't feel like doing something or another option catches our eye, it is easy to back out of our original commitment. Canceling plans last minute, skirting responsibilities and making choices based on a fleeting whim rather than looking at a bigger picture are the negative residue left from all these choices. When you make a real commitment to yourself and see it through, however, you gain self discipline and can feel good about the integrity you have cultivated within yourself. This integrity will begin to trickle into your life and enhance your relationships and connections with those around you.
Challenge #2: Daily Practice Requires Time and Energy
If you do any daily practice with sincerity it is something you need to make sure you have time for each day and enough energy to get through. If you fall asleep during your meditation every morning or end up cutting out half of your yoga practice because you are too drained to get through it, not only is this frustrating but it eats away at your motivation to keep going.
Why is this valuable?
If you notice yourself on a streak of cutting corners or skipping out on your commitment to get some extra sleep, it usually indicates it is time to take a look at the big picture of your life. This challenge for me personally assisted in prompting a career change when I worked in the music industry. It became increasingly difficult to get up early for Mysore (Self-led early morning Ashtanga practice) after spending my nights out at concerts watching bands. At some point I had to choose. Dedicated early morning yoga just wasn't sustainable on a few hours of sleep and something had to give.
As with anything, you have to put in work to benefit from a daily practice, so if your lifestyle choices are getting in the way of how you want your life to look it is a wake up call to shift things. My advice is to start with better sleep routines, cleaning up your diet and ditching excess and unneeded drama. This will not only strengthen your practice but will lead to a happier, healthier life (which is part of the reason we engage in daily practice anyway, right?).
Challenge #3: Daily Practice Works
Most of us begin a daily spiritual or health practice like yoga or meditation because we are ultimately seeking some deeper purpose or understanding about the nature of life. By sticking to a daily commitment with sincerity, at some point you might find that your practice actually starts to work on you. The transformation that a daily practice can kick-start may cause a widespread ripple effect which makes this challenge one of the toughest. For instance, when I first began a daily meditation practice years ago, I was simply looking for inspiration in my life. The more my practice deepened, the more I came to realize how much discord and divide existed between what I thought I wanted and the reality of my life.
Why is this valuable?
After a major breakup, a move, a reshuffling of my social circle and a career shift, I saw the unassuming power that my daily meditation held. Very simply, I had reached a point where I could no longer accept the status quo I had participated in. Meditation didn't force my hand, it simply became a quiet pause in the day where I could sit with myself and let everything be as it was. After doing this regularly, the natural and rational conclusion was that I didn't want to let myself flow any further in the direction I was headed. Many people attribute a strengthening of their inner navigation system through different forms of daily practice but sometimes the pull towards transformation requires a complete life overhaul. Be prepared.
The bottom line is that at times daily practice may catalyze big changes in your life, but it isn't all doom, gloom and turmoil. If a practice was more trouble that it was worth, no one would do it. Daily practice is a beautiful way to check in with your physical, emotional and spiritual well-being and truly enjoy the amazing life you are here to live. It is time each day that you owe yourself, so if you don't have a daily practice I highly reccomend trying it on.
When the challenges come up as they do, don't be defeated; see them simply as powerful pains in the ass.
Photo credit: Getty images
