9:00AM Class 7
Delana led us through this wonderful class this morning. I say wonderful because it was full of yoga drama. Suddenly it seemed as if every inch of my skin was itching. Not all at once, but everywhere at different times. Stuff like this is better left alone and ignored. It’s usually just the monkey mind trying to get you to fidget, to distract you from your practice. Well, in this class the monkey won out. I fidgeted, I scratched, I got light headed and dizzy, and I went down to the mat several times during this class. It was pretty rough.
The second set of just about every pose today was pretty good, and even though I went down to the mat I managed to do every set of every posture. Can’t say the same for my next class. More about that one in a minute.
Early Afternoon – The Wall
I had planned on going to the 4:30PM class, but I was really tired and sore so I changed my mind to go to 6:30PM. The extra couple of hours helped. It was still a struggle to go to class. It felt like there was a physical wall in front of me, and my mind was creating all kinds of reasons not to go. I had work to do, I was getting too fatigued, I could make it up by doing a triple tomorrow. All excuses, and bad ones so I went to the studio.
6:30PM Class 8
Susie taught this class. She’s a wonderful teacher. Besides teaching Bikram Yoga she’s also a personal trainer here in Bend. She’s very good about encouraging everyone in their practice. It’s something that means a lot to me because it’s genuine, encouraging, and helpful.
So this class was something else all together. Some postures I only did one side of one set. Most of the beginning floor series I sat out, or just did the set up for the pose. It was a very rough class. Rough as it was, there were some gems in all the drama.
I found a deeper edge in Half Moon pose. Having all the muscles on your side stretched feels really good.
The first side of the second set of Standing Bow Pulling Pose (Dandayamana – Dhanurasana) was probably the best one I’ve ever done. This posture gives me the best stretch in the backs of my legs. My glutes, hamstrings, and calves get more flexibility in this posture than any other. At least for now. The better my flexibility in the back of my standing leg, the stronger I seem to be in the entire posture. It is very cool to see the progress in this posture.
The next huge thing in this class was the first set of Trikanasana (Triangle pose). Triangle is an extremely strenuous posture that I’ve been working on all year. I used to be able to do this one without much trouble. Now it takes a lot of work, and I’m usually falling out. Today was no different. I fell out, or perhaps it would be better to say that I was ripped out of the posture by a muscle cramp.
The set up was one of the strongest that I’ve done for this posture. My arms were out to my side, my active leg was bent in a perfect 90 degree angle, I felt strong and steady. Then just before turning our arms to go into the posture Susie called for us to shift our arms back more. Thats when the big muscles along the back side of my left ribcage decided to seize up. It was like getting a charlie horse across a huge expanse of muscle. Hurt like hell, and threw me on the ground like a rag doll. Finishing up the rest of class was pretty difficult.
After this big yoga drama moment my ribcage began to feel like it was on fire. The tiny muscles in between my ribs were very sore making it almost impossible to stay on my stomach for the beginning floor exercises. Felt like my ribcage was getting crushed. Ouch!
The rest of the class I did what I could, and rested in Savasana (Dead Body Pose) when I couldn’t.
Tomorrow is going to be two back to back classes because I have to be somewhere in the afternoon. Tomorrow should be very interesting. We’ll see.