Week 2 and 3 are over!! Another 11 days and 22 yoga classes have passed! I look back on the last 3 weeks and can’t believe the time has passed so quickly.
I’ve noticed a pattern over the last 2 weeks. Mondays always seem to start with excitement to get back into the heated room and practice the yoga we came here for. By Wednesday evening, I’m 6 classes in, hours of sitting through posture clinics are adding up and lectures that go well into the night leave me tired. By Thursday morning’s class the floor series of the class is used for quick cat naps. By the evening lecture I attempt anything to keep my eyes open. By Friday evening’s class I walk into the yoga room and there is a different vibe in the air. I know I have made it through another week. I have one more class ahead of me on Saturday and my energy is all of sudden back! Call it what you want, believe it or not, mind over matter, putting the right energy out or maybe just the effect of so much Bikram yoga…by the end of the Friday evening class I would go out and run a marathon if you told me to or maybe just sit down and have some ice cream. It’s a marathon in my head!
Two 90-minute classes a day have been the only sure-fire, predictable thing I can count on in a day. It’s 90 minutes to put to practice what we learn and talk about so much through the day. Yoga twice a day has also completed humbled me. I was told to forget everything I knew about yoga when I arrived here. I didn’t understand why and naturally ignored it! The importance of a solid foundation became very clear in week 2. I can’t sugar coat this, yoga twice a day has left my body feeling like my muscles were torn to bits. Something I was definitely not expecting! Ice and Advil are a regular part of my day. I’m practicing yoga, and I leave the class feeling like I just played a game of touch football! I can always go deeper into postures, I can always push harder, I can always give more. After struggling for a week I realized without engaging the right muscles groups when necessary, I was working against myself and I was paying the price for it! Bikram yoga is a dialogue driven practice between the instructor and your body. For you to find YOUR balance. When the instructor says engage your quads, tighten your glutes, weight in your heels…you need to do it! I could get away with incorrect alignment doing yoga a couple of times a week. Doing it twice a day brings it out loud and clear!
Luckily this week we also started Anatomy classes. I could finally put proper names to everything that was aching me! Learning all, and I mean ALL about the skeletal, muscular and nervous system. Did you know ¼ of all of your bones are in your feet? That 20% of your body weight is bones? I have words like Sternocleidomastoid, Bicep brachii, and Latissimus dorsi running through my head! As if learning a 90 minute dialogue wasn’t enough. Dr. Jim Preddy, an ER doctor and an anatomy instructor is our teacher for the next 2 weeks. In his own words “he has mad skills”. And he does! Three hours a night we reviewed everything about muscles, nerves, and bones and he made it not only interesting but hysterically funny! Dr. P also told us about the Piriformis muscle. A little muscle in your glutes that was giving A LOT of us serious discomfort. If it’s tight it could cause compression on your sciatic nerve causing pain in your lower back through your legs. He showed us 2 stretches and Voila! I was fixed! My classes and my aching body have changed DRAMATICALLY since. The man is a miracle worker as far as I’m concerned!
Overall, I’ve been completely inspired in class. I’ve seen Bikram pull students up on the stage that can stretch their arms over head and reach completely back and touch their finger tips to the floor and than fold forward and touch their head directly onto their toes. I’ve seen Bikram actually stand on a student’s back while she was in a forward bend on the floor without hurting her what so ever. Bikram has corrected me twice in postures. In a sea of so many bodies he called me out NOT when I truly couldn’t give anymore. It was at a moment my mind was just somewhere else and he called me on it, dead on! I’ve realized there are certain postures that I always feel I can’t go further out of pure FEAR. It’s made me want to improve my practice beyond what I ever thought I would. Throughout the dialogue of the class Bikram talks about the precision of the postures, the power of one negative thought, and mind over matter. Most importantly, I’ve learned to always give 110%. 100% is all you’ve got and the other 10% is the latent force you didn’t know you have. It pushes you just to your edge so you can go a little further next time. ALWAYS. RAISING. THE. BAR!
