9:00AM Class 5
Sleep is not a problem when you’re pushing yourself to do doubles in Bikram yoga every day. Last night I slept like the dead, and yet I was wide awake at 6AM. Wide awake and sore as hell. The deep muscles running down my spine are cussing me up one side and down the other. Whiny little babies. They better get used to it because I’m not stopping. Not over a few sore muscles.
Delana taught a wonderful class this morning. A class in which I dropped to the floor almost every posture. There’s a sensation that I’ve experienced usually coming out of a posture that I’ve been pushing into very hard. The feeling is a sort of light headedness, dizzy kind of thing. The sort of feeling that warns you against making any sudden moves or you’re done for. There was quite a bit of this as I worked through this class today, and it put me on deck. In spite of all the yoga drama there was some minor improvement just about everywhere. Tiny, tiny, tiny adjustments barely the space of a sheet of paper, but they’re real.
Doing doubles like this is going to take a toll on your body. About 2PM I began flagging really hard, so I went home to have a nap. Didn’t really sleep, but it felt good to lay on my bed in the dark.
4:30PM Class 6
Wow! talk about some screaming hamstrings. Everything is tight, stiff, sore, fatigued. It feels like I’ve been hit by a Mac Truck, and that’s the good news. Everything that I’ve been doing for the past 3 days has been building up to this point. As stiff and sore as I feel I know that going through this class will help build things up for tomorrow, the day after, and next week. Just do the yoga and get through the class.
Molly, who spent a wonderful day up on Mt Bachelor, taught this class, and it was really good. As hard and difficult as this morning’s class was, this one turned out to be better and worse at the same time.
One big thing was that I didn’t go to the floor once during this class. There were plenty of poses that I came out of early. I bent over at the waist supporting my hands on the floor or on my legs, but I didn’t leave my feet during the entire standing series. It’s the first time that I’ve done that in quite some time.
Muscles were very sore though, and towards the end of class I could really feel my energy level drawing down. I was very happy today when this class came to a finish. This one is done, and it was amazing.
Day 3 total classes 6
Why Bikram Yoga?
Bikram Yoga is a specific series of 26 hatha yoga postures performed in order in a 105 degree studio. The class is led by a teacher who calls out the same dialog every day. Every teacher learns the same dialog, and teaches it the same way.
This is a very strenuous regimen. It will improve your strength, your flexibility, and your balance. It also makes dealing with stressful situations much easier. After all if you can go through a 90 minute Bikram class you can go through almost anything.
For me this is a program that shows me huge results in controlling the size of my belly. When I’m able to practice on a regular basis Bikram builds a fitness foundation that in the past has helped me drop down to 190 lbs which is a helluva a lot better than being a big slug at 245 lbs. Last year when I arrived in Bend I weighed 245. After doing Bikram everyday for 90 days I had dropped 40 lbs, and I could put my socks on easily again.
This is a hard workout. When you first begin it is very confusing because the teachers don’t really show you how to do the postures, they just tell you how to get into the postures, and at first this doesn’t make much sense. My body won’t do that
you might say. Maybe true, maybe not. The coolest thing about yoga is that wherever you can go in a pose today, that is a perfect pose for you. My first Bikram yoga teacher Patrice Simon at Bikram Yoga the Camp in Costa Mesa, California likes to say that it’s not Yoga Perfect. It’s Yoga Practice.
Go do the yoga!