Like many people, I’m inherently lazy, and I’d prefer to lie around in a big, fluffy bed sipping hot chocolate and reading books all day, every day, for the rest of my life.

I can quickly fall into a rut of not going to yoga, which is a terrible thing, because I love yoga.

Not only do I love it; I need it. I’ve finally come to realize that a consistent yoga practice is essential to my mental and physical well-being. I understand this on a logical level, but that still doesn’t mean that every day I enthusiastically leap and bound my way to class.

I’m just not that kind of person, unfortunately. I am very good at coming up with excuses to not go to yoga:

I hurt my leg six months ago. The cat might get lonely. It’ll take too long. I need to finish this book. It’s too hot…

I could go on endlessly. Every single day I wage an internal battle with myself to get my butt into class, and over the past four years I’ve gotten just as skilled at coming up with reasons to go to yoga as I am at making excuses to stay home.

Do you need motivation to get to yoga today? Feel free to use as many of these as you need:

1) After class you can eat tacos and feel significantly less guilty.

2) No one has ever finished a yoga class and said, “Wow, I feel like crap. I wish I would’ve stayed home and binged on deep fried Twinkies instead.”

3) Think of all that bad karma that’s going to burn off.

4) Yoga is way more fun that putting away all that laundry that’s sitting there in the basket on the floor begging to be folded.

5) According to my sister (a yoga teacher): “One hour of yoga is only four percent of the day.” That means we still have 96 percent of the day left to watch an entire Netflix series.

6) Yoga clothes are much more comfortable and easy to get into than that pair of skinny jeans that gives you muffin top.

7) Because there is nowhere else where you are required to lie on the floor in a calm, warm room and listen to pretty music and not have to do anything else at all except breathe.

8) Yes, yoga is difficult and it can be strenuous mid-way through, but think of how at the end of class we leave and it’s like all the BS we’d been worrying about before has vanished. Go for that sense of freedom.

9) One of the best feelings in the entire world is stepping outside from a really hot yoga room and suddenly feeling the fresh air on your damp skin and in your lungs.

10) Yoga is a magical cure for crabbiness. Works every time.

11) People who go to yoga are 79 percent prettier. This is a scientifically proven fact.

12) Because when a yoga teacher gives you a compliments and calls you out by name in class, for about a week after you will feel like a superhero who can conquer the entire world. This is probably going to happen if you go to class today.

13) There is an extremely hot guy who always shows up at this time on this day. Go to yoga for the view and enjoy every second of it.

14) No one can take life too seriously with their butt up in the air. I mean this as a good thing.

15) Today you are allowed an indulgence. If you go to yoga you can get a new pair of really cute yoga pants, or that fancy candle, or a cold-pressed juice, or whatever you want. But maybe after class you’ll feel like having gone was its own reward and you won’t need anything else.

16) There is a Dairy Queen across the street from the yoga studio. I promise this will be our little secret and I won’t tell a soul if you feel the need for a Peanut Buster Parfait.

17) Align those chakras. No one wants to walk around with some blocked-up, wonky chakras. Eww.

18) Movement and inspiration are connected. Feeling stuck? Can’t find a solution to that one annoying thing? Need a creative boost? Go to yoga and the ideas will work themselves out of you. Reach those arms up to the sky and catch them.

19) There are no grades in yoga. No one takes attendance. There are no evaluations, no penalties, no strategies, no literal or figurative ladders to climb, no quotas to meet. In yoga, we are fully in control of our own practice—and that’s empowering.

20) That hard pose you’ve been working on forever? Today is the day that you’ll get a lot closer to being able to do it.

What are you waiting for? Grab that mat and get out the door—I’ll see you in class!

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Author: Victoria Fedden

Image: rufai ajala/flickr

Editor: Toby Israel

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