Friday Night Wrapup

This has been an intense week for many reasons, not the least of which is the stark reality that the “everyone” in the “everyone gets sick” guarantee for teacher training actually includes me.  I finally succumbed to some stupid bug last night and today, Friday, has been an incredible challenge to push through.  I never practice Bikram yoga when I’m sick under normal circumstances, so it was incredibly humbling to have my morning class consist of maybe half of the postures in the standing series and two-thirds of the floor series.  My body was just too weak and devoid of any energy to get on board with class.  I spent more time on the floor this morning (with my eyes closed, even!) than I ever have in any class.

I should probably add that this morning’s adventures came directly on the heels of Bikram’s eneregetic return to training on Thursday night.  He's been gone for about 1.5 weeks.  Last night we had him for class, then lecture, then some uncountable number of episodes of the Mahabharata series.  This series is the serial adaptation for television in the late 1980s of one of the epic works of Indian literature that depicts ancient India through the lens of its royalty, ethical philosophy, mythological characters, gods and goddesses, and great, epic battles.   Did I mention also that evening class was supposed to start at 5pm, ended up starting around 5:15, and didn’t end until 7:15?  That’s two hours plus in the hot room for all of us, followed by a night that went on until 2am.   Almost forgot to add that the room was so hot that all the visiting teachers commented on it when they went up to speak before lecture.  Yeah, it was that hot. Guess it’s no big surprise that I’m not well.

However, in today’s afternoon class, taught by Juan, I had an instantaneous uplift in my mood and overall health.  I can’t explain it, don’t understand it, all I know is that I went into that class seriously ready to spend most of it lying on my mat, and ended up doing most of the standing series and most of the floor series without too much drama.  It was somewhere around separate leg stretching, I think.  Suddenly, I didn’t feel nearly as awful as I had been feeling all day.  Still not great, but not quite as comatose as I had been.  Perhaps my two naps today helped speed along my recovery.

Today marked the end of Anatomy and Dr. Preddy - he has been an amazing, engaging lecturer.   He also helped me tremendously with my back and showed us all two stretches that we absolutely must do everyday: Piriformus and Psoas stretches.    We’ve got our final on Monday, but if the final is anything like the first test, I’m not too concerned.  I think dialogue is going to be the priority of the weekend activities.  We’ve already been warned that we “haven’t had that many late nights yet” (Yikes!!!) and next week will probably be pretty sleep deprived.

Posture Clinic update: I’ve delivered up through Balancing Stick Posture, and am currently working on Triangle.  This weekend will be a welcome relief from the grind.  Again this week, I haven’t made it outside for a number of days and I can’t imagine that the air quality inside this hotel is that delicious here by the airport in Los Angeles.   By that logic, maybe going outside isn’t the best idea after all.

Me and Rajashree after class!