I am in love with Bikram Choudhury and I am not ashamed to admit it!
I can only describe it as fantastically ridiculous, innocent puppy love of the purest kind. And I know that it's just a phase I'm going through, because half the teachers I know say that they have gone through it at one point, but so what? I'm enjoying the phase! Seeing him makes me happy. Hearing his voice makes me happy. THINKING about seeing him makes me happy. I just have such overflowing affection for that crazed little Indian energizer bunny, in all his glorious over-the-top inappropriate craziness and in all his moments of sincere, sweet kindness. I've got it pretty bad.
I barely hesitate to drive 2 hours each way to LA and back on an early Saturday morning when I know he's teaching class. And I don't even CARE if he notices me, or talks to me, or knows I exist. It's not like that. I'm happy just to be around him, in his class, doing the yoga series that he created for us. He already gave me the yoga. I don't need anything else from him.
And I love that early Saturday ritual that I've developed... sometimes every weekend, or sometimes every couple of month... rolling out of bed at 7am-ish, hitting the road at 7:30 still sleepy with my yoga mat in my trunk and a mug of tea in my cupholder, driving the familiar route down the 101 past the Santa Barbara studio and continuing south, down that stunning stretch of costal highway where the mountains rise up on my left and to my right there's nothing but the expansive blue of the Pacific, then up and over the mountains and into the valley, then into LA, where traffic on the usually packed 405 tends to be blissfully light on Saturday morning, windows down by now, a favorite CD playing, and then the exit to La Cienega, the crazy spiraling off-ramp, the long sketchy driveway from Sawyer Street that leads to the parking lot behind headquarters, plenty of now-familiar faces as I stake out a favorite spot in the huge room, and then Bikram strolls or bounces in, perches on his orange throne at the front of the room, and "check check check 1,2, good morning everybody, let's begin."
Guess what I'm doing this Saturday...
