Yes, I know. Crazy. I didn't have to do it or anything. It's not like I'm behind. But I felt quite stiff in class this morning and had so much energy after class (thank you Andy for keeping my practice honest) that I thought, after having a pretty long break eating, rehydrating, shopping with my lovely teenage girls, that I might just have a go at another.
Did the 4.30pm at Albany with Luke - Andy was practicing, as well as my lovely and supportive friend Line, and another guy was doing the same double combo as me (nice to meet you James) - and there were about eleven/twelve people in the class. The planets lined up for me in terms of a) there were less people in the room so it wasn't quite as hot as it has been and b) I was already warmed up from my earlier class and from being active in between. And it felt amazing! I just had the best class - deeper backbends, staying in some postures longer than I normally do before I fall out, feeling I had heaps of energy in the sit-ups and like I still had energy at the end of the class instead of feeling like I've been run over by a truck. Wanted to run out of the class singing because it felt so good, instead of loping out with a thank god that's over kind of relief. Felt amazing to be putting another sticker on the board, like a kid before Christmas opening those little boxes on the Advent Calendar and getting the Day 6 chocolate out early. I thoroughly recommend it. (Not the back to back double - but the double with some nice recovery time in between).
Had a lovely chat to Andy afterwards, as well as thanking Luke for an awesome class - we're so lucky to have such great and dedicated teachers at our studio. (I include Kate and Dave here too - they're all fantastic). I would never be doing this challenge without their support and love. And a big shout out to all my friends from the studio who have been commenting and supporting me through this yoga "trip" as well as saying nice things about the blog. I am so lucky to know you guys!
A couple of glasses of wine and thai takeaway later (Todd's away and the kids wanted fish and chips so I opted for the thai next door) I am feeling very mellow and sure I will sleep well tonight. And outside the fireworks are starting up! I feel like the whole world is celebrating my great class, in cartoon boom box technicolour. Bang! Zap! Kapow! Boom! Have a great night everyone!
One woman's experience of the challenge of 30 Bikram hot yoga classes in 30 days - November 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Day Four
I haven't been sleeping that well since I started this challenge - I guess it's the monkey mind messing me around over what to expect over a month of getting my arse into the studio and onto my trusty mat. Also, being in the hot room sometimes does weird things to my body temperature outside the class - for the last couple of days I have felt like I am walking around with a fever. Still chugging lots of water and had a pineapple flavoured coconut water after class which was drinkable - who knew it came in a form you could scull without almost throwing up? Awesome.
Pretty good class this morning with Andy - she was great at getting me to go further in some of the postures and she commented afterwards that she can see my practice changing which is good news. Considering how achey I felt before I went in there - all those stiff muscles in my back in particular - I was quite pleased with how I did. Had an awesome spine strengthening series, for a change (lately), and even though I fell out of quite a few of the standing poses it was mostly because I was working hard, flirting with my edge, rather than backing off, so that was good too. Still hanging in there though - didn't even budge in camel, stayed in it the whole time. This is a key indicator for me because when I am really feeling the temperature in the room usually camel and triangle are the first poses to go belly up for me. My half moon was a bit crap today but that was mostly because my back muscles seem much less flexible, at that stage of the class, and perhaps getting a bit better sleep will help in that department. (I am considering taking Valerian to up the snoring time).
Another thing Andy said to me after class was to try and focus on the class I'm doing - don't even think about the challenge or how many I have to go - so I'm going to try and give that a shot. Train the monkey mind to be still and focus, instead of going bananas...
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Day Three
"This is not talkback." Dave
When I woke up this morning the last thing I felt like doing was yoga. I was stiff, every muscle in my back ached and my shoulders were hunched up into my neck and I could feel muscles in my butt I hadn't felt for quite some time. Of course, the thing to do when you feel like this is actually to go to a yoga class and stretch them out, but sometimes the instinct is to wait it out a bit and rest up, which I can't do, since I've promised myself 30 days in the hot room. So with all the determination I could muster I got to the studio at five past nine and there were people waiting outside because Dave was late. I started to panic he wouldn't get there and then what would I do? Shit. This yoga is messing with my head. When he got there I joked about him liking to get there to experience the entourage en masse instead of one by one checking in at the desk and he said he always wanted to open a nightclub!
Lots of people complained about the heat this morning too, so clearly it's just that the outside weather's warming up so the temps/humidity inside the room are moving on up too. Personally I found it cooler than the last two nights so that helped. I had a pretty average class in terms of I just took it easy and tried to do what I could do knowing I was busting through some barriers with the deep stretching under pressure I'd done the nights before. There were several new people in the class so other than one correction in triangle for me (I wasn't getting down low enough and didn't have my elbow at my knee like I should have) Dave was looking after them. Which was great as it kept the pressure off a bit. And it was slightly amusing because some of them were asking questions and answering back (very unusual in a Bikram class, kind of frowned apon) and at one stage Dave said, "This is not talkback you know" which made me laugh out loud. I still sweat like crazy and noticed my mat is starting to smell (it didn't get much drying time between last night's and this morning's class) so I've sprayed that with a solution of essential oils and tea tree oil and put it out to air dry today. Hopefully it will be a much friendlier mat to practice on in the morning.
A couple of the challengers were outside drinking coconut water as I was leaving. I know it's great for replacing electrolytes because it's isotonic (same consistency as blood, they use it in IV drips in some countries where young coconuts are easy to come by) but the taste/texture of it puts me off a little. I think because it has a slight metallic taste and a bit of an oily texture (not sure that's the right word, oily) that it reminds me of blood. Anyway, usually I would drink some in a smoothie with pineapple, good greek yoghurt, some ice, whizzed up with a hand blender. Today, just for a change, I went for the frozen berry version - a handful of mixed berries out of the freezer, a slosh of any kind of fruit juice (this time tropical), some ice and half a small carton of coconut water. I'm drinking like a fish at the moment so it's quite nice to be imbibing something that's a bit tastier than simply H2O. Though there's plenty of that going down at the moment as well. Cheers to day three being over! Bring on the next twenty seven...
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Day Two
I had to take the 5.30pm class with Andy even though I would have liked to get in to the studio in the morning and get it over with early. But I had my last meeting with my self esteem therapy group this morning (eight weeks and this was the final one so I couldn't miss it) which meant I had to do an evening class, regardless of how I was feeling. I was OK before class. The room didn't feel that hot when we first walked in and set up and did some preliminary stretching on our mats and towels before settling down into savasana and waiting for the class to begin. I was itching to start. But more and more people arrived and I would estimate we had close on 40 people in that room, which you just know is going to get hot once everyone starts sweating. And so it was.
I got through the standing series OK - no dramatic changes though I did manage to get my left leg almost kicked out in standing head to knee (haven't been able to do that for a while because of an old hamstring injury from adult trampolining that is coming back to haunt me, or has been for the past few months) before I fell out of it. Got my head to the floor in separate leg stretching first set so had to bring the feet in closer for the second which was challenging but felt good. Triangle was its usual mixed bag - I'm getting a bit lower as the hips open up but left side is still iffy. Need to work on that. Almost got both hands up in toe stand. Felt like I could have done it if the pose went on for a bit longer which was a nice feeling.
Spine strengthening series. Aaargh. I felt so weak when I hit the floor and it was difficult even getting the legs up in locust etc. By Full Locust I could feel something going on and then it happened. I just started sobbing. I was already face down in Lake Tania, almost the whole towel soaked with my own sweat, at least in the shape of my own body, so I'm not sure anyone else even noticed. But it was pretty hard getting back up into floor bow with the tears running down my cheeks and my breath hampered by the impulse to suck the tears up and try and get on with it. Luckily it was about then that Andy made a joke (thank you Andy, you are an angel!) which propelled me out of my own misery and back into the class. At least I think that's what happened. The rest of the class was a bit of a blur but I was pleased I managed to stay in both sets of camel and not completely lose it before the end of the class.
Another guy who is doing the 30 day challenge, Tony, was practicing next to me and the first word he said at the end of the class was "Faarck". I had to ask him to repeat it because I was so frigging tired I couldn't even hear. And then I agreed with him. It was so bleeding hot in there and now, even though I am having a glass of wine completely against all the instincts to rehydrate (not really, I had a litre of water first, after class), I am actually looking forward to being back in the studio to practice at 9.30 tomorrow (my lovely 13 yr old has spring netball in the evening so I can't do a late class) because it actually might be cooler in the mornings. I hope so anyway. The good news is ... by 11am tomorrow I will have three classes down and I will be one tenth of the way there! Yippee for me. (And phew).
I got through the standing series OK - no dramatic changes though I did manage to get my left leg almost kicked out in standing head to knee (haven't been able to do that for a while because of an old hamstring injury from adult trampolining that is coming back to haunt me, or has been for the past few months) before I fell out of it. Got my head to the floor in separate leg stretching first set so had to bring the feet in closer for the second which was challenging but felt good. Triangle was its usual mixed bag - I'm getting a bit lower as the hips open up but left side is still iffy. Need to work on that. Almost got both hands up in toe stand. Felt like I could have done it if the pose went on for a bit longer which was a nice feeling.
Spine strengthening series. Aaargh. I felt so weak when I hit the floor and it was difficult even getting the legs up in locust etc. By Full Locust I could feel something going on and then it happened. I just started sobbing. I was already face down in Lake Tania, almost the whole towel soaked with my own sweat, at least in the shape of my own body, so I'm not sure anyone else even noticed. But it was pretty hard getting back up into floor bow with the tears running down my cheeks and my breath hampered by the impulse to suck the tears up and try and get on with it. Luckily it was about then that Andy made a joke (thank you Andy, you are an angel!) which propelled me out of my own misery and back into the class. At least I think that's what happened. The rest of the class was a bit of a blur but I was pleased I managed to stay in both sets of camel and not completely lose it before the end of the class.
Another guy who is doing the 30 day challenge, Tony, was practicing next to me and the first word he said at the end of the class was "Faarck". I had to ask him to repeat it because I was so frigging tired I couldn't even hear. And then I agreed with him. It was so bleeding hot in there and now, even though I am having a glass of wine completely against all the instincts to rehydrate (not really, I had a litre of water first, after class), I am actually looking forward to being back in the studio to practice at 9.30 tomorrow (my lovely 13 yr old has spring netball in the evening so I can't do a late class) because it actually might be cooler in the mornings. I hope so anyway. The good news is ... by 11am tomorrow I will have three classes down and I will be one tenth of the way there! Yippee for me. (And phew).
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Day One
BEFORE CLASS: I've been feeling like a deep sea diver investigating an old wreck when I practice yoga lately. A deep sea diver has to breathe or there is no diving. A yogi has to breathe calmly or there is no yoga. But the key words here are probably "old wreck". I don't mean I am an old wreck, though some days this 45 year old body does feel like a bit of a rust heap, especially as I go deeper and deeper into the practice, going back through old injuries, past hurts etc, and as the layers of who we think we are slowly get stripped away. And unless the breath is steady and calm it is impossible to get into the place I need to be to really check out what's going on in there - what parts need adjustment, what still works, what to "treasure", what I can let go of - before I rise to the surface again, ready to take on the world. I woke this morning feeling a bit resistant to the 30 day challenge - possibly because of the grey clouds outside that feel a little oppressive, possibly because I'm resisting change (and I know 30 days in a row of yoga is going to change something), possibly because it feels like I have a cold coming on (that bit of a sore throat, that blocked nose) or possibly as a bit of an overdose on MacIntosh caramels while handing out lollies to the teeny ghouls & guises that came to our door for Halloween last night. But I am still very excited about what this challenge could throw at me and I am even resisting the urge to be resistant. 4.30 class - can't wait!
AFTER: Man, it was hot in there tonight. 4.30pm class with Luke, which was awesome, but even though I hydrated like hell over the past couple of days I could still feel the heat like a wall of fire in there the minute I walked into the room. Others in the front row were definitely of the opinion that the temp had been rammed up, possibly because it's warmer outside but more likely as a way of getting deeper into the practice, sooner. I had a bloom of sweat on the front of my red yoga top by the end of the first breathing exercise, which, because of the colour, looked like blood spreading out in a flowering circle on my chest, until the whole outfit was soaked, which I am sure happened pretty soon after eagle. Fell out of triangle in the first set (left side) but managed to resurrect it for the second. Came out of camel earlier than normal in the second set because I thought I might puke, just a little bit, because of the heat. Managed to get through everything else with some breathing, though it wasn't the best or most flowing class I've ever done. Luke kept us honest and "in it" though, and was just as motivating and enthusiastic as he always is. Felt great to have a sticker on the 30 day challenge board at the end of the class, and to have only 29 of them to go! (As Todd said to Molly this evening at the dinner table after she asked why I'm even doing it, "It's like a marathon your mum's doing, except she's not a runner..") And he's right - I'm not a runner. But remember the tortoise and the hare? ;)
AFTER: Man, it was hot in there tonight. 4.30pm class with Luke, which was awesome, but even though I hydrated like hell over the past couple of days I could still feel the heat like a wall of fire in there the minute I walked into the room. Others in the front row were definitely of the opinion that the temp had been rammed up, possibly because it's warmer outside but more likely as a way of getting deeper into the practice, sooner. I had a bloom of sweat on the front of my red yoga top by the end of the first breathing exercise, which, because of the colour, looked like blood spreading out in a flowering circle on my chest, until the whole outfit was soaked, which I am sure happened pretty soon after eagle. Fell out of triangle in the first set (left side) but managed to resurrect it for the second. Came out of camel earlier than normal in the second set because I thought I might puke, just a little bit, because of the heat. Managed to get through everything else with some breathing, though it wasn't the best or most flowing class I've ever done. Luke kept us honest and "in it" though, and was just as motivating and enthusiastic as he always is. Felt great to have a sticker on the 30 day challenge board at the end of the class, and to have only 29 of them to go! (As Todd said to Molly this evening at the dinner table after she asked why I'm even doing it, "It's like a marathon your mum's doing, except she's not a runner..") And he's right - I'm not a runner. But remember the tortoise and the hare? ;)
Monday, October 31, 2011
Tomorrow - The Beginning
Tomorrow, Tuesday 1st November, I will start my first ever Bikram yoga 30 day challenge. Woohoo! So excited. 30 classes in the hot room in 30 days, sweating my middle aged arse off. Hopefully. (Literally)? It is almost summer after all and a bit of extra exercise and stretching and sweating can only be good for you, right? Let's hope so. Anyway, hoping to be able to record how things go on here, maybe not daily, we'll see how things go, even if it is just so I can get my own head around the experience. It's a little bit daunting already but hey, it's Halloween, right? And everyone should do at least one thing every day that scares them!
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