As a teacher and a student of yoga and meditation, I can say that without a doubt the greatest predictor of success is consistency. The student who shows up to yoga once a month and practices for 3 hours gains very little, whereas the student who sits in meditation for 5 minutes every single day, gains a lot. The work we do with our dogs is the same. We can take our dogs on a 20-mile walk once a month, and give them rules to follow when we have guests over, but if we’re not practicing consistently, our dogs are still gonna be messed up.
Here’s the thing: all animals, including humans, thrive on structure and consistency. A consistently good night’s rest means we will consistently wake up refreshed. Consistency with our kids means they will grow up balanced and knowing what to expect. Yes, it’s good to get out of our comfort zone and to be adaptable, but we have to have structure and consistency to come back to.
My years as a punk rock musician have taught me a lot about the power of structure and its benefits on my mental health. When you’re in a different city every night it’s very easy to have zero structure or discipline. This causes a snowball of bad decisions: eating poorly, sleeping poorly, partying too much, etc. Yet, if I’m able to keep even a little bit of my normal structure (such as a 10-minute morning meditation) the rest of my day ends up being more manageable. Yoga is the same way. Our dogs are the same way.
If we take our dogs on a 30-45 minute walk, twice every day, they will learn what we expect from them much better than if we never work with them save for the rare occasion we go on a long walk. The longer walk is great, but only with the foundation of the daily structure. The good news is that with simple structure, there is no such thing as a loss. Even if we have a difficult walk, we have made more progress than if we never put the leash on, to begin with. Even a little effort, done consistently will lead us to greater levels of freedom. Try to do a little every day. Then as the consistency becomes solid, try to do a little bit more.
A Little Effort
Miguel Chen is a meditation, mindfulness, and yoga expert. He is the founder of Yoga For Punks and the Blossom Yoga School, bass player for Teenage Bottlerocket and the author of I Wanna Be Well. He loves dogs and tacos, but not dog tacos. To learn more about how/why he and BDB have teamed up, read this blog post. For more information on Miguel, visit: miguelchen.com.
