2020 has been an extraordinary year. 

This week I usually pop in to recap the last 12 months. This year is different, and this wrap up is different. We’ve had energizing Wins. You, the Athletes for Yoga, showed up big by using yoga throughout a pandemic. Our global community of athletes has inspired, our new video platform and app have taken off, triathlete Chelsea Sodaro joined our pro team, and A4Y pros have stepped forward to lead like never before...

This year has asked so much of us all, and it feels like there’s no more productive use of this time than to catch your breath — Be still and absorb and celebrate all that we have quietly accomplished during a year when achievement has felt elusive. It’s time to choose rest, because it’s only in this active state that the important work of gaining perspective, integrating positive change, and growing can happen. This work is vital as we prepare for another year that will undoubtedly require us to bring it.

As athletes — as humans — we’re accustomed to living our life in seasons. And just as nature has seasons, there’s a natural flow through our training blocks, peak weeks, race weeks, and offseasons. We have seasons of higher productivity and seasons of lower output. Seasons of ease, stress, grief, rest… peaks and valleys. 

If anything, this year has been a forced offseason. Many of us — driven, goal-oriented athletes — have found this difficult to accept. You might have tightened your grip on plans and habitual routines, searching for familiar ways to cope even while facing the unknowable. But defaulting to habit keeps us stuck and ignoring the reality in front of us, no matter how uncertain, impedes progress. Just as trees drop their leaves in the autumn, we too must shed a layer and let go of what’s no longer working, especially as we adapt to uncharted territory. While a natural process, it can leave us feeling disoriented and vulnerable, and to navigate this kind of change we must take care of ourselves. 

I can feel the collective eagerness to turn the page and focus on new goals. I’m right there with you. But instead of charging into 2021 by penning stringent goals with rigid schedules at a time when the only certainty truly is uncertainty, I invite you to instead use this season — whether for you that looks like the winter solstice on December 21, the time between now and January 1, or longer winter months ahead — to reflect, absorb, and recover for real. Reset. Use yoga.