Whew! After going away for the weekend and drinking alcohol two days in a row (a fair bit of alcohol, I might add), I was worried about how class would go at 4:15 today. However, even though I didn't drink enough water today (which I really should have tried to with being so dehydrated already), I had a great class. My dizziness seems to have eased up, thank God.
The funny thing about Bikram's--and everyone knows this--is that you don't make steady progress in the same way that you do with many other activities and workouts. I'm not saying that not every class counts because I think that every class really does count for so much; I really believe in that build-up of "merit". However, like I was saying, with other sorts of activities (and maybe even other kinds of yoga) you get a feel for the routine and master aspects of it and expect to gain steadily. For instance, in Pilates, once you can "do" a pose or go to a particular depth in a pose, you can now "do it". Meaning, it usually doesn't happen that suddenly you find you can't do it anymore, or if you do, you suspect it's because you've sustained an injury. Similarly, with jogging, say, once you've worked your way up to a certain pace for a certain amount of time, you figure you'll be able to go that distance from a point onwards as long as you feel all right. If you're really tired or hung over or sick or some other extraneous circumstance is interfering with your jog that day, you adjust and know to take it easy, or know it's going to be *that much harder*. I'm not saying that other workouts don't vary, but I don't get surprised all that often.
Think it's like this with Bikram's Yoga? No. It can be very surprising. I've only been practicing this yoga for a month and a half and I'm already amazed at the variance I've seen in my body with particular poses on certain days. Specifically, I will be fairly happy with a certain pose and feel that it is getting progressively less difficult for several classes only to get going in class and find that suddenly it has become one of the hardest of the 26 poses! And it will stay that way, class after class. So far, this has happened to me with the following:
1. Awkward Pose (the first part has become impossible - I just can't get down).
2. Eagle Pose (I can't seem to make any progress with this pose and it's become really hard to balance).
3. Standing Bow (everything in the world has gone wrong with this pose - I can't keep my balance, I can't get my leg up, I can't get my arm up, and it exhausts me).
4. Balancing stick (all of a sudden this pose is torture - I dread it and sweat buckets throughout).
5. Standing Separate Leg Head-to-Knee (in a big way for at least six classes, but finally a breakthrough! Now I'm better than ever with this pose and have almost straightened out my knee).
6. Tree (the most relaxing pose of all has become very hard to balance, have no clue how this has happened).
7. Rabbit (this pose has been unique torture for at least ten classes - my sister feels the same way).
8. Head-to-Knee (my hamstrings are in pain for the entire three-part posture. This one hurts like hell these days, but it may be that I am going deeper whereas I wasn't challenging myself very much in the earlier days).
Of course, it's worth mentioning that some poses actually get a lot easier and I find myself wondering how they ever gave me so much trouble to begin with (especially since the "newly difficult" poses now seem so much more dreadful in comparison. In any case, like I said - it goes up and down and you just never know what kind of class you're going to have.
***My studio is having a 30-day challenge beginning May 15th and I've decided I'd like to go for it. So far I've only been five classes in a row at most and I've really only been able to maintain a practice of 4-5 classes per week, but I figure this is a great opportunity. Going away out of town several times and overly busy weekends have been the main interferences with my practice. I had planned to go camping for the May-long weekend but I'm not that heartbroken over cancelling, and I'd far prefer to stay in town over this long weekend as opposed to later on in the summer. I can foresee no major events between the fifteenth days of May and June and as I anticipate my practice slowing down in the summer with hot weather and a busy schedule and going out of town, this is the perfect way to finish off the intensity of my first three months of Bikram Yoga. I'm excited!
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