Follow a diet. No cheat days. Finish two 45-minute workouts a day, one being outdoors. Drink 1 gallon of water. Take daily progress pictures. Read 10 pages of a book, excluding audiobooks. For 75 days. If you fail to complete any single one of these rules, you must start over from day one, no matter how long your streak was. Even if you made it to day 74.

These are the rules of a challenge that has been widely circling the internet since 2019: 75 Hard. I’m currently embarking on this journey, but with a yogic twist! I’ve created a yoga challenge inspired by 75 Hard for the sake of improving my own personal life, and I want to share it with anyone else who is looking for something to help them turn the tides. Continue reading to the end to see the program I’ve created for yogis!

First, here’s a bit of a backstory. I’m doing 75 Hard for Yogis because I want to stay spiritually connected in my day to day life and create habits that will set me up for a better future, but my primary reason is to develop healthy coping mechanisms. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve tended to avoid feeling my emotions, and my main method of doing so was through emotional eating. This led to a lot of weight gain throughout my life, especially in undergrad when I was dealing with major depression and anxiety. Two years post-graduation, I gradually got so much better in thanks to therapy and yoga. They are the reasons I realized that I’m an emotional eater, and that the excess weight is a symptom of my mental health. I also learned healthy ways of coping thanks to her and the practice. I overcame clinical depression, and with these improvements to my mental health, I decided to move to another country and make concentrated efforts to lose weight.

I ended up losing a lot of weight while enjoying this new chapter of my life. However, after several very taxing life events I experienced during the 1.5 years following my weight loss, my weight started to stall. Initially, I was okay with it as I had bigger to fry at the time. I was just happy that I was not gaining and still pretty fit amidst all of the chaos. Thankfully, things gradually settled down to a manageable level. I wasn’t constantly in fight-or-flight mode like before, but I was still in a consistent state of low-grade stress. As time went on, my healthy habits became less consistent, and I was not taking care of my body the way I once was. As a consequence, I gained back a significant amount this year.

Today, I’m in a much better place. I have a new job in a new city, a new relationship, new goals, and new perspectives of life. With all of these changes, I would like to renew myself too. I want to start healing and improving again, and that starts with the mind. I want to get back to my roots (or “Back to Source”, if you will) and remind myself of my passions, my life goals, and my purpose. And yoga is the thread that connects them all.

This brings me back to 75 Hard for Yogis! I’m using yoga as my primary tool to help me transform and navigate through huge life transitions. I’ve adjusted the rules of 75 Hard to include mind-body practices such as meditation, asana, a healthy diet, exercise, and personal development. Most of all, I designed the rules to be flexible and sustainable. It is a challenge, yes, but I also want this to lead to lifelong yogic habits. I know that changing the rules of the original challenge automatically disqualifies it as “75 Hard,” but I’ll still refer to it as so. Living with yoga as the foundation of everything you do is not easy.

Here are the steps:

I’ll elaborate on the rules in a future post, but you may be thinking, “do I still have restart all the way back from day one if I miss anything?” The answer is yes. After all, even Patanjali, the father of yoga himself, wrote that yoga is a practice that can only be mastered by working consistently, persistently, and intently over a long period of time. However, if you get sick during the challenge, listen to your body and be honest with yourself. If you feel well enough to continue, commit to finishing everything on the list. If you are genuinely too physically ill, do what you can, get some rest, and pick up where you left off once you’re recovered.

I’m currently on day 14 after restarting from day 6 of my first attempt. It’s not easy, but I’m reaching a point where I’m seeing subtle differences. Meditation and readings related to yoga are definitely opening me up to being more self-aware of my thoughts, and I’m seeing subtle, positive changes in my behavior. For example, there were a couple of emotionally distressing situations I experienced this past week, and while I felt a compulsion to eat in order to cope, I was conscious enough to choose differently for the first time in a very long time. Instead, I chose to meditate, go for a walk, and talk to a friend. There’s still a long road ahead, but those are big wins for me, and I’m excited to see how much progress I will make by the end of the program.

Whether you’re stuck in a rut, going through major transitions, a yoga practitioner, or just someone who wants to add healthy habits to your life, I invite you to try out 75 Hard for Yogis! It’s been a positive learning experience for me in just 2 weeks so far, and I’m certain that it will help you too. If yoga isn’t your cup of tea, then you can try the actual 75 Hard challenge, or you can do 75 Soft by adjusting the rules of the original challenge to suit your needs and goals.

It takes a lot of time, effort, and determination. It’s hard. But you can do it. You can do hard things.

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Thank you for reading.

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If you have any questions about me or Back to Source, you can reach me through my contact page.

With gratitude,

Adrianna Brie