...that yoga is therapy for your body and soul. It keeps you humming, healing and relaxed. It keeps your blood pressure in check, your skin vibrant and young, and it lengthens your life!
Yoga makes you YOU!
On a cellular and energetic level it amplifies and energizes your major and minor meridians and organs, reversing aging from the inside out, bones to the skin and fingertips to the toes!
Image courtesy of arztsamui / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Last week, after a class she wasn’t even teaching, I asked Miranda what I could do about my balance. I’d asked her once before and she told me to see her sometime after class.
I chose this particular class - one she hadn’t even taught, and one I
had barely muddled through - to ask her. I figured she might provide a
correction, or one of those on-the-fly-demonstrations she does, but no,
she offered me a karma class. She said she could see me trying (I call
it struggling) and thought I could benefit from a one-on-one.
Now this was Miranda (and we all know about the rainbows, sunshine, and unfettered magic she seems to bring to our space) but it was not the only time a SSHY teacher has offered help. Alexis and Heather, right from the start, were quick to make suggestions. Ivanka has pulled me to the side and tried to convince me of a better way, Jenn has continually shared knowledge and support, as has Vicky and Billie (who, even before she was stamped with the Bikram seal of approval, had suggestions on
ways of coping).
I know this advice is shared freely, not just with me but also anyone
who walks through the doors. As we lay in the final Savasana and every
teacher offers the parting words ‘/If you have any questions or need a
little help, come and see me up front’/, they really mean it.
Posture by posture, Miranda provided adjustments and advice I can
already feel working its way through my thick skull. I say this in as
much of what she had to offer I have heard before, basically in every
class. The beauty of the Bikram dialogue is that it reinforces the
movement of each posture. Miranda was telling me what I had heard
before, time and again. In fact, I thought I was already doing some of it.
For example, the major ‘thing’ I took out of the session was a greater
concentration on breathing. Pretty basic, yes, but it seems in all the
pulling and locking and stretching and pushing, I neglected doing what
should come naturally.
Keep breathing; it is something every instructor, in every class,
reminds us to do. Breathe. So I had heard it before and I thought I was
doing it, but obviously I wasn’t listening.
I’ve often said that all yoga asks is that you breathe and try. Not only
was I not listening to my teachers, I wasn’t listening to myself.
So, on Miranda’s advice, I now enter the class with the mantra /I’m
going to breathe for/ /90 minutes today/. Again pretty simple, yes, but
oh how effective. Breathe. Of course there is the 80/20 (and I’m working
on the where and when) but for the most part I strive to keep breathing,
normally, and not hold my breath in certain postures.
Breathing: I could even call it my stumbling block. It slays me that
every class I hear the same thing but it wasn’t until last week it made
sense.
Call it the power of listening, or the power of persuasion, but I have
the feeling it may be the true power of yoga. It comes to you not when
you want it to, or not when you need it, but perhaps only when you are
ready.
-jeffrey-
Good morning Amanda,
My knee is telling me to stay away, but my hamstring told me the same thing a few weeks back and still I went. Other parts of my body have been rumbling, but not as loud, and I chose not to listen. I just packed my bag, like I am off to yoga. I woke this morning without the alarm, like it was time for yoga. Am I a sucker for punishment, like that is what yoga has become?
A few weeks back I thought I was going to challenge myself to 30 days. I'd started reading Bikram's book seriously and was having problems with his suggestion where everybody should do 60 days straight. However 30 days seemed possible, especially after four or five days where my mood was still buoyant. I told myself I'd try, sometime. Then this challenge came up . . . how hard could 21 days be?
Turns out it was damn hard. Not a week, but maybe like eight days in, it got harder. But I was committed, so nine, 10, 11 days I pushed through the pain and kept on. My body protested, but I recoiled. Some of my postures got better, my balance, though still inconsistent, allowed me to believe there was progress. A few good days, a few bad, but still consecutive days. Day 17 killed me (well, day 16 of the challenge, but I started a day earlier, and there was no way I was giving that up). I could not give in. My body seemed to be rejecting certain elements. You told me my body was changing. I thought it was a reaction to the dietary suggestions; my yearning for yogurt or my craving for a steak (yes, for the most part, I gave up dairy and red meat).
I finished Bikram's book last night - coincidentally after I'd completed the challenge - and after reading the final pages, and the explanation of how the body changes on both the inside and the outside, it finally made some sense on how each posture built upon the last, how all of them in proper order, completed as best you could (while always striving for better), would turn your body inside out and push you forward.
So maybe it makes sense that I go back today to the torture chamber. I have told myself a couple of times over the past weeks that I could pull off 30. I even have said that aloud to others. Even yesterday, as a fellow challenger was putting up her sticker, I told her I was doing 30.
I can't tell you how many times I have gone back and forth on that decision over the past 24 hours. I keep telling myself it would be good for me, and good for my knee. My knee keeps telling me a few days off would be even better, that a few days off would allow myself to heal.
But Bikram, in that darn book, says to push through the pain, that the yoga will give the muscles oxygen, that I will be a better person for going. So how can I argue with Bikram? Has anything he has said in the book, or anything any of his disciples have said, been wrong?
I'd have to say /No/.
So my bag is packed. It's time for yoga. It might even be time to turn this into a 30-day challenge. What's another eight days?
Day 26 killed me. My knee organized a militant protest with fellow joints and vital organs, and I hobbled home, popped a few Ibuprofen, elevated my leg and spent the remainder of the day in bed.
I couldn't make it to class the next morning, and felt somewhat dejected that I wouldn't get my 30 days. Somehow I couldn't find the excitement in making 123% of the 21-Day goal, and instead I focused on giving up at the 86% mark of the 30-Day plan. I was thinking of the failure of a self-imposed goal, instead of celebrating the success I had achieved.
I returned to the room after a four-day break (ironically, it was to be my 30th day; the date circled in my agenda), my knee still a little sore, my ego a little bruised. It's going to take a week or so of a few days on and a day or two off, to get me back. That is my intention, to be gentle on myself. I pushed myself a bit too hard.
It was during the four-day break I realized how much the regular practice had become part of me; It's not that I had to get back to the hot room, I needed to do it.
I needed to hear the dialogue.
Most days we hear one instructor or another tell us to 'Set your intentions'. Unlike words guiding you through postures, the intentions you have to set for yourself. Yoga doesn't do it for you. Yoga has no expectations, really, other than breathing and trying. We put the expectations on our self. The one thing I have recently figured out is that if you fill your head with expectations, you leave little room for anything else.
Intentions is a softer word than expectations; it's not as lofty, nor as demanding, and it leaves room for you to step away, or take a knee. Intentions change, and are allowed to change, from posture to posture, or day to day. So I've giving up counting days, and now just try to make the days count. This is my intention.
See you in the hot room.
-jeffrey-
By SSHY student Norah
"You can grow flowers from where dirt used to be."
- Kate Nash, 'Merry Happy'
"I attended a free yoga class that Amanda taught at Lululemon in early 2011 and was blown away by her talent, knowledge, and compassion. I wanted to learn from her. It took me a few months to summon the courage to try hot yoga because I didn’t think I would be able to do it well. I am physically impaired and I struggle with everything yoga demands of a person: flexibility, agility, stability, strength, and stamina. I attended my first Bikram yoga class in May of the same year and it was a boost of detoxifying and peaceful energy. I attended a few more classes sporadically throughout the summer but found that I compared myself to other people too often. It was difficult to leave my ego at the door. I did not make my practice consistent until I decided to take on Amanda’s Rejuvenation Challenge in February of 2012. I attended twenty-five of the thirty classes and was tested in every possible way. I expected (and
wanted) the challenge to show me a linear progression in my ability with the poses, but I found myself on a physical and emotional rollercoaster.
I would have a few tough and humbling classes, then have a comparatively ‘easier’ or ‘better’ class, and then the next few classes would be hard again. There were some days where I felt I nearly fell into the bow pose on the floor and other days where I couldn’t even stretch far enough to grab my feet. On my fifth day of the challenge, I experienced the first of three consecutive pain free days. I had been in chronic pain for nearly three years, and just four yoga classes in a row gave me an unbelievable reprieve. I’d forgotten what it felt like to live without pain. The ache has since returned and practicing yoga helps relieve it, but for those three days I felt like I was free of an abusive relationship.
Two thirds of the way through the challenge, I had a frustrating class and wanted to cry. I lay on my back thinking, ‘I want to cry but I can’t cry. The tears aren’t there.’ A few days later, something inside me broke. I finished class in tears. I went into the change room and, as I was getting changed into my street clothes, I started to cry harder. A couple of minutes later, everything hit me all at once and I sat down and sobbed. I’d been carrying around so much frustration, resentment, sadness, worry, depression and exhaustion. I had tried to keep everything to myself and deal with it alone. Yoga finally forced the feelings out of me. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, but I surrendered to the moment and bawled. I went home and cried for another hour and a half, but I knew then that I’d needed it.
Just before the challenge ended, I had the best yoga class I’d ever had because I shifted my expectations and stopped berating myself when I couldn’t do the poses to their full or correct extent. I realized I had to stop fighting against the limitations of my impairment and work with and through them instead, so I stopped equating ‘I can’t do this pose correctly or as deeply as other people can’ with ‘I’m a bad person’ and the entire class was better and easier. I decided to apply this paradigm shift to every yoga class and every other form of exercise I do.
Five days after the challenge ended, I went to England for the first time in nearly two years to visit friends I’d made in graduate school. Four people whom I met up with told me that my walk was better, I carried myself with more assuredness and confidence and I seemed happier. I will definitely take on another challenge in the coming months. I still don’t feel that I am very ‘good’ at yoga, but the challenge helped me realize that I can develop a consistent practice that I can maintain for life. Self-care isn’t a matter of endgame. It’s about well-being and holistic happiness every day."
- Norah, Winnipeg, MB