Spend 100 Days With Me

In my recent interview with Kyle Cassidy, I talked about the value of easing into a new body practice by choosing to try the experiment of doing it for a chunk of time that is short enough to be doable and imaginable, but long enough to let you actually sink into what you’re doing and start to feel comfortable with it.

My favorite length of time for this is 100 days, because it’s a nice round number, but one that also doesn’t seem interminable.  I have a friend (hi, Shelly!) who used to do 100-day projects a lot, with the general idea of increasing her awesomeness levels, and I have to say, it worked for her and it got me started playing with the 100-day idea, too.

I like 100 days.  With 365 days in a year, it’s less than 1/3 of a year.  It’s about the length of a college semester… or a little less.

As it happens, it’s also the length of time between February 1 and May 11, 2013.

This seems to me like a perfect time to experiment with a new body practice.  I’ve been working on figuring out how to do something new in my own body practice, and facing all the usual wibbles and wobbles and walls, and was just thinking last night that it might be time for me to do the 100 days thing myself.  And then I thought… I wonder if anyone else would like to join me?

Shall we?

Here’s the rules.  There are only 4.

1) Before February 1, decide on a new body practice you’d like to experiment with.  It can be vague and open-ended, like:

“I will move my body in some way I find pleasant for half an hour.”

or it can be very specific, like

“I will swim 25 laps of backstroke.”

“I will tapdance for twenty minutes to the music of Philip Glass.”

Note that this is about something you’ll actually be doing, not about outcomes.  We don’t care about no stinkin’ outcomes right now (see Rule #4).

2) Write it down!  You can write it down in a comment here, or send it to me in email at hanne at hanneblank dot com if you like, or just write it down privately.  Writing it down helps give it some weight and intention.

3) Starting Friday, February 1, commit to doing your new body practice at least every other day until May 11.  You can do it more often than this if you want to, but not less.  The rule is that if you didn’t do it yesterday, you do it today.  (Unless you are too sick or injured.  That’d just be silly.)

4) Let this be just about doing the thing that you’re choosing to do, and not about “results.”  This is an experiment!  This is to find out what it feels like, what the experience is like, of doing a particular thing with your body on a regular basis for 100 days.  That’s all it is.  Your “result” is going to be that you get to the end of 100 days having done something particular with your body at least every other day for the preceding hundred days.

Along the way we can talk about the experience; you’ll hear some about mine in this space.  If you also do this and blog about it, let me know when you post, since I may link to some of your posts so other people can find them.

Who’s in?  Email me or comment with your goal if you want me to include it in a post on February 1!