Day Eighteen

I hope you don't mind that I am recycling some of the collages I made and posted on my old blog. It just seems that some of them are appropriate and I don't want to go around pilfering too many images from other sites and people and get in trouble for it.

I had the most amazing class this morning. Dave was teaching and the room was fairly full (but not bursting) and the front row had 4 challengers in it (all doing the 30 day challenge in November) including a super awesome 67 yr old Annabelle (very inspiring and always smiling), the very gorgeous Miss Emily B (who is going to teacher training in April, and I so want to go with her), quietly beautiful Melanie (whose husband Clint also practices at the studio - they run a very cool tattoo parlour together) and ME. I have been avoiding the front row for the past few days (maybe it's a week, you lose track of time doing this yoga) and I felt great when I woke up this morning so I just set up right there in the front next to the teacher's podium thing and cracked right into it. Everything came together, the energy in the room was killer, the breathing came back with some great laughing moments in savasana because of Dave's jokes and our little comebacks, and it really felt great to have let everything go and just practice and be focussed and actually enjoy it!

Andy always says "enjoy it" before a class and I have to admit I didn't used to find classes that enjoyable. Afterwards though, walking out of there dripping with sweat and feeling like I'd had the shit kicked out of me etc, always feels great. Dave said the other day that sometimes it's like getting beaten up and all you want to do is make it stop. And it's true, some days are like that. But it doesn't matter what I feel like when I walk into that hot room, because I know I am always going to come out of there feeling better about myself. I might be more raw or more alive or happier or whatever. It elevates you, even if that means it puts you into a place of emotional vulerability and makes you look at stuff in a different way, it is teaching you about your essential self. And I love it.

I am totally in love with Bikram yoga. But it wasn't always that way. The first twelve months I made myself go, I made myself practice just to keep the weight off and to keep my mood as even as possible. I knew I was getting some benefits but I wasn't really going much over the benefits you'd get from normal exercise when I practiced 3 days a week. Having a daily practice means you really do fill up your tank with energy and you have energy to spare. Everything is more connected, flows better, a lot of the niggly little things that used to make me uptight or anxious just fall away like leaves off a tree and settle or scatter. I think Bikram says something about "no-one can steal your peace" and it's true, when you get to a certain point with your practice and continue daily, that the peace carries over into your normal life and seeps into everything you do. It's pretty amazing and yet so hard to describe because you really have to do it to feel it.

A few days ago I had a terrible thought. I was feeling pretty low about myself and about yoga, I was struggling with some stuff at home (asking my husband about going to teacher training, which is a biggie, 9 weeks in the States, costs a lot of money etc etc) and it just felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall. I thought, shit, maybe I should just quit yoga and go and sign up for Zumba or something else. Zumba! Imagine. I hope you're chuckling about this as much as I am right now...

Namaste.