Day Thirteen

Almost half way through the challenge now (will be by tomorrow lunchtime) and the stats so far are as follows:

13 days
14 classes
2 doubles
1 day off
approx 2 kilos lost (not including water)

Had a great 4.30pm class with Dave this afternoon. It was super hot in there and the breathing got a bit heavy for a while during the most intense postures but I felt awesome for most of the class. I struggled just as much as I always do (lets face it there's a long way to go to get perfect in any of the postures) but I went in there feeling good and confident and motivated and I came out energised, motivated and confident - which is what you always hope for. It's hard to explain how I feel lately because it's an odd feeling, like I am vibrating on a different level or something, everything just seems better, clearer, has more depth. I have more focus for longer during the day. I feel more involved in stuff. It's a strange thing to describe but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is a little bit like the stage of labour/childbirth (don't worry this won't be graphic or violent) where the whole world seems to slow down and you feel such a strong connection to the universe, just before you completely open up and deliver the baby into the world. There is this space (or at least it happened to me in both of my deliveries) where everything is vibrating and all kinds of things come flooding into your mind and things start to make sense but not in a conscious explainable sense. Just in a "knowing" sense. (One of the things I clearly remember was that the answer to life WAS 42, and at the time it made perfectly good sense). I am not feeling it as intensely as I did in labour, of course, but I am getting glimpses of a similar feeling. And now, when I say I feel more "energetic" after class it doesn't just mean in a physical way. Somehow there just seems to be more energy about me and available to me. (Shit. Jesus. Maybe this is what Bikram means when he says "yoga IS a gas station")?!

To me the Bikram process has many similarities to the process of natural labour/childbirth. Contractions and the spaces in between have many correspondences -the way we work very intensely in a posture and then rest and relax as much as possible in savasana is very much like a contraction followed by the space that allows the female body to open up (with the addition of oxytocin the body releases during the contraction) in between contractions. The way the compression/decompression works within each pose could be compared to the labour process too, for similar reasons. And it feels like a kind of re-birthing as well. I don't know this for sure, because I haven't been to teacher training, but I would place a small bet that some of the language used is like NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) too - those instructions to go "way back, way way back, as far as you can see" are very much like an instruction for the subconscious mind to revisit where you came from. At least, that's how it seems to me.