Not practicing -> great class?!?

Today was unexpectedly great! I feel like Christmas and New Year's made my practice VERY sporadic for the past couple weeks; I only got to practice 4 days during the week of Christmas, and then I missed New Year's Eve due to being at work all day and New Year's Day due to being hungover and then having to go to work. Since it's been AGES since I had 2 consecutive days without Bikram, I was slightly apprehensive about tonight's class.

Class was AMAZING. One of my best. The teacher's tone was definitely more relaxed than usual, due to a huge influx of first-timers and people returning to the practice after weeks or months away (yay for January). But he still taught a hard, hot class. I just felt totally RELAXED the entire time. I definitely worked hard and "killed myself", but mentally I felt totally serene the whole time and my breathing stayed very slow and even. And here are a few things that happened:

• I balanced with my head to my knee in head-to-knee for much longer than I've ever done - probably a good solid 15 seconds, instead of holding for 5 or maybe 10 and then bailing.
• I found and held my balance in toe stand WITHOUT resting my butt on my heel at all - something that I've been struggling with for a month or two.
• I went straight into standing bow - no dawdling in the set-up - and locked out the kicking leg on BOTH sides, both times!! I have been locking out the left leg in class for a couple weeks now, but I had NEVER locked out the right before, in class OR out. HUGE surprise - felt great!!

What a great beginning to the New Year! Granted, any practice that I did today would have been the best of the year by default alone, but this was a REALLY good one. Yay!