Breathe and try...

in ,

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.

Jeffrey Bikram testimonial.jpg

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-

 

 

 

 

My knee is telling me to stay away… a personal Bikram challenge

in ,

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-

Hot yoga testimonial: Countering a lifetime of bad habits

in
Jeffrey Bikram testimonial.jpg


I looked up from my runny eggs at Salisbury House and across to Stafford Street Hot Yoga. I’d never noticed the place before, but I’d never been looking for it. My daughter had been doing hot yoga somewhere else, and raved about it, but I gave it little thought; no more thought than yoga in general. Really how much exercise could it be? You pretty much stayed in one place . . . on a mat.

It was one of those windy December mornings where the idea of any hot room had a certain appeal, and purposefully standing on a mat was probably more exercise than I’d had in a while. I had regularly managed to drag myself down to Sal’s for a greasy breakfast, so it’s not like a walk to the studio would be difficult.

I pulled on the studio’s door, figuring I could ask a few questions and probably talk myself out of this crazy idea. Hot yoga? Really? Me? The door was locked. Apparently they were replacing the floor with some revolutionary material. How could an ‘exercise’ that seemed to involve little movement require special flooring? Yeah, I was skeptical, even suspicious. . . okay, a little curious. Curious enough to visit the website.

Now maybe it was Amanda’s video presentation, along with all the information provided, but there seemed to be a lot more to hot yoga than I’d imagined. I had no idea there were even several types of hot yoga, but this Bikram guy seemed to have it all figured out. The information - on the website and through its links - talked about lowering blood pressure, increasing circulation, and stretching the body and the mind; holistic improvements, all done with 26 poses, in 90 minutes, at 40 degree temperature in 40 per cent humidity. 50 bucks was the cost of an unlimited introduction.

I’d thrown away $50 on crazier ideas before.

I thought more, I read more, and December 12 was approaching. You had to do something substantial on 12/12/12 didn’t you? I did. After guzzling more than the recommended amount of water, I walked down on the Wednesday.

I was shown the room (later referred to as the ‘torture chamber’), offered a brief introduction, and was told listen and watch the mirror if I felt out of place.

This was my first yoga class, my first hot yoga class. I was the fat guy in the bathing suit.

I sort of made it through my first class. I know I got a bit dizzy and did come to appreciate the dead body pose. I did listen. I did drink a lot of water. And did I sweat! I was told not get discouraged, and just to keep trying.

I kept trying. I went, three days in a row. I was sore; parts of my body had no idea they could, or should, stretch like that. By day four I bought yoga shorts – yes, I finally had a reason to step into Lululemon.

My daughter once told me that if you do something for seven days straight it becomes a habit. I went eight days, just to remind myself what a habit could be (at least a good one). Actually, aside from an appointment I couldn’t get out of and the fact the studio was closed for Christmas day, I managed 15 classes in December. I stayed in the room
for all off them.

I used to think that some vigorous walking could provide me with a bit of exercise. Hardly. I knew I was out of shape but didn’t realize how badly. Hot yoga reminded me where I was. It was not good. Each day though, it got better. I could feel it physically, and mentally as well. I was sleeping better, I was eating better, and I was feeling better,
overall. My blood pressure had dropped.

By mid-January, as my 30-day unlimited was coming to a close, I decided if I felt this good on fifty bucks, a hundred dollars wasn’t a bad price to pay for feeling better. I bought the automatic monthly renewal and kept going. I read a brief in Reader’s Digest that said it takes 66 days for a habit to become fully entrenched. So that was my goal, past January and well into February.

There were aches and pains, more than a few struggles, illness, missed days where the snooze button provided a convenient excuse, and I left the room a few times more than I ought to have. Still, for the most part, I kept coming back.

I do the best I can, working to get my postures to the 90 percent level 90 per cent of the time. Some postures I’ve gotten pretty good at; Half Moon and my Rabbit (you know, the towel trick) is not too bad, and I’ve become very accomplished at Savasana. Balance remains an issue for me; I mean really, think of the last time you had to meaningfully stand on one leg for any length time in real life (let alone trying to twist the
other leg into a less than convenient pose)? It had to have been decades since I even tried, but I keep trying, and each day I feel an improvement (and still keep trying to twist that other leg).

I discovered a lot about myself. I found it’s not easy to tame a restless mind for 90 minutes, and that aspiring yogis (apparently I now fall into that category) come in all shapes and sizes, in all ages. I witnessed how even those contortionists who continue to amaze me also take a knee, or a break in Savasana, now and then. I discovered my
clothes fit better now, and that your shins do actually sweat (no, it’s not runoff, the pores open and they sweat). I’ve discovered that in a lifetime of bad habits, a good one can still rise to the surface, if you allow it.

I suppose, among so many things, I’ve learned that hot yoga is mostly about letting go - especially of all those pre-conceived notions - and allowing your mind and muscles to go to places forgotten. It’s about accepting yourself and discovering meditation is not so much a solitary thing, but rather a state you can arrive at in a roomful of strangers.
By accepting the struggle in the room, you are better able to deal with the turmoil in your life.

By this time I’ve heard about other types of hot yoga, and other places to practice, but I really have no reason to look elsewhere, or see if something is better for me. It’s about feeling comfortable where you are. It goes past SSHY’s skilled and supportive instructors, to the people you see on a regular basis in the same hot room. Many of them I still don’t know, any more than to say hello or smile, and still they offer encouragement, a little advice or insight and inspiration. It’s a common ground where everybody, all ages and shapes, leave the ego at the door. Every one of us is doing the same 26 postures, and doing what is best for them. As much as it is a group class, it is very much an individual thing.

So yoga, hot yoga, I do it; even so much as to say I have a yoga practice. Yesterday I completed my 100^th class, and today I’m beginning a challenge (as if the past months have not been challenging). I’m looking forward to the next 100 classes. Bikram’s Hot Yoga has become a habit – dare I say an addiction - and there is so much more to learn, so much more to endure, and so much more to enjoy.

Namaste

Jeffrey Lewis