For anyone that doesn\’t know, I’m writing to you from Los Angeles, CA after finishing my first week at the Bikram Yoga Teacher Training. I will be here for the next 8 weeks keeping you up to date on life within “the yoga bubble”! I’ve been asked quite a few times why did I choose Bikram Yoga and what is it? After years of running and heavy impact exercise on my body I decided it was time for a little yoga in my life and went out and tried a few different classes. Most were too slow and boring for my taste. I came across Bikram Yoga in 2002. After 3 months the changes in my body and overall health were amazing. I’ve been hooked ever since!
Bikram Choudhury started teaching his sequence of 26 postures here in California in 1977. Since than his teachings have expanded to studios all over the world. Every studio teaching in the same sequence of postures, all using his same dialogue. The 90 minutue practice is done in a heated room of about 100 degrees. I will get into more detail of the purpose of the heat as the training and my updates progress. The easy answer is it helps you sweat out toxins and loosens up your muscle to get deeper into postures.
I considered doing the training for YEARS and finally decided the Fall 2012 training was it for me! I’ve gone through so many emotions leading up to this training ranging from anxiety, to fear to elation to shock that I was actually going to be doing this! There was an odd calm about me the week leading up to the training. I had no idea what to expect. I choose not to get too many details from other teachers I knew that had been through the training. I didn’t know anyone else going. I was leaving my life of COMFORT and routine behind. Still there was a feeling in my gut that said this training was 100% what I needed to be doing.
I arrived here in Los Angeles last Sunday. Me and 445 other yogis embarking on an experience of a lifetime! Registration and orientation was later in the day. We were told our schedule would be yoga twice a day. Breaks for lunch and dinner. Lectures through the day and continuing after our evening practice until an undetermined time! As an early bird, the possibility of late nights was the only thing that petrified me! We were told each one of us would be reciting the dialogue of Half Moon pose in front of everyone including Bikram. That was the second thing that petrified me! There was no turning back now! Bikram was finally introduced and lectured us for a couple of hours. A humorous, highly entertaining man dropping tidbits of knowledge from his years and years of practicing yoga in Calcutta, India to teaching it here in the States. He told us to forget everything we thought we knew and be completely open to this process. He repeated a familiar Tola phrase many times, no judgements, no expectations and no egos.
Our first class was Monday afternoon and it would be taught by Bikram. I was incredibly curious to see the yoga room and experience a class taught by this person whose training attracted people came from all corners of the globe. I signed in for class and then got in line waiting for the doors to open to the yoga room. The doors open and we all funneled down a smaller hallway with suddenly less AC. I walked through the next set of doors that opened to the heated yoga room. Suddenly hit with the heat of the room my nerves started to kick in. At the same time I knew it was exactly what my tight hips and hamstrings were craving! Needless to say the room is HUGE. Three walls are mirrored. Six enormous, loud heaters line the back corners and side walls. Ten lines of white tape run across the floor and your mat is to be placed exactly on the line so we can all fit in the room. I found my place front and center, because that’s how I roll! As the room filled up with more and more and more people I sat on my mat looking around at those 445 pairs of legs and arms lining up in perfectly straight lines next to me and behind me. How in the world was I going to concentrate and balance in anything with all of this going on around me? I knew at that moment the next 9 weeks were going to be the biggest mental challenge of my life.
As I write this my first week of training is over. I went out to dinner and left the hotel for the first time since Sunday. Everyday started at 8am and we were lucky if it ended by midnight. Nine yoga classes are behind me, 88 are ahead of me…some days were strong and focused other days my ego came into the room with me and got the best of me. I’ve had moments of complete exhaustion. I’ve been hungry. Trying to figure out the best balance of eating and hydration was been a challenge! We were told this first week was like a vacation and it will only get harder. Still I wouldn’t change it for the world. All of a sudden I have new friends from all over the world. Australia, Singapore, Italy, England, Bali, Brooklyn!….You can only imagine the camaraderie being built.
Another phrase has been stuck in my head all summer. “Get out of your comfort zone, that’s where the magic happens”. I am certainly out of my comfort zone!
Stay tuned…..
