Day Five

"At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice." Maya Angelou

I woke at 5.45am this morning so I could get some toast and water happening because if you eat less than two hours before the class the heat does weird things to your stomach and your energy. But I find I can't practice on nothing, so I have to make sure, if I'm doing a morning class, that I at least eat something small a couple of hours before, and I wanted to make the 8am class which meant stuffing something in before 6am. I went back to bed for an hour though, cuddled up to the husband, and it was lovely to fall back into a deep sleep knowing the alarm would wake me in time and that everything was in place for a decent practice. And I felt good going into the studio this morning - only a bit stiff, probably not much stiffer than I normally would be at an early morning class.

One of the girls on the challenge, Alex, missed a class yesterday so she was telling me before class that she planned to do a double (for non-Bikramites this means two classes in one day) and that she planned to do them back to back (ie she was taking the 8am class followed by the 10am). I was flabbergasted. I can imagine doing a morning and an afternoon class in the same day. In fact I did do this once, when Todd and the girls were away and I managed a week of yoga classes with one double chucked in for good measure. But I think a back to back double would really stretch me (no puns intended). So I found her efforts really inspiring and I was so pleased for her because she will feel so great about being on track afterwards and putting not one sticker on the board but TWO!

Further inspiration came from the girl on the mat next to me who just about passed out in the first set of the awkwards. She was sitting on her mat and looked incredibly pale and after a little while Andy came over and asked her if she was OK. When she answered her voice was slurred so it sounded really like she was going to faint. I think she said something about wanting to throw up. Andy asked Emily to go get her a coconut water and she drank that and lay down and sat out a few poses then got back into the class and was practicing like a champion. It was like she rose from the dead or something - and it was awesome.

As you can probably tell from this post, my attention in the room was a little distracted in the first part of the class. I think my focus kicked in in Eagle pose though (I didn't fall out of it once, and I often do, and actually even before that I managed to complete the second parts of the awkwards too, which I find I flick out of often) which was great because sometimes I don't think I quite get my "eye in" until about standing bow, or later. I vaguely recall getting to the sit up before camel and thinking, how many sit ups have I done before this one because this feels like the first? I obviously wasn't being very conscious of what I was doing, or I would have been 100% in the sit ups the whole time. But I did think to myself that at least I was surrendering to the process (and maybe I was purely being in the body and not the mind) and not counting sit ups or poses and just being there in the room and practicing. And surrendering is much much different to giving up.