You get what you need...

I had a great class tonight. Strong, precise, and relaxed. After class, I told my friend who had been teaching that tonight I finally got the yoga class that I had been NEEDING.

I have been obsessing listening to the Rolling Stones for MONTHS now. Just that one song: "you can't always get what you want... but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need." I think this more or less sums up a great yoga practice. You CAN'T always get what you want. But if you just try and try and try, you eventually do get what you need.

Some examples: what I WANT sometimes is to have these great rock-star postures. What I NEED is to take a step back, get back to basics, accept my practice for whatever it is, and appreciate the benefits that it gives my body. What I WANT is to go running down to LA all the time to practice advanced series with Emmy and get crazy new skills. What I NEED is to focus on consistency and maintenance and be happy with the times that I DO get to go see Bikram or Raj or Emmy. What I WANT sometimes is to drop out of grad school, go to Bikram teacher training immediately, and move back to my friends and my home studio. What I NEED to do is practice PATIENCE and commit to the present moment, do the things that I've come here to do, and believe that I will always be in the right place at the right time.

This is actually very, very encouraging to me, because I feel like as soon as you realize that you CAN'T always get what you want, it becomes OKAY to not get what you want. Yeah, so I want this to happen, and it's probably NOT going to happen now. That's ok. I'm still going to get what I need.

It finally occurred to me - TONIGHT - that this is one of the things that Bikram talks about all. the. time! He says that one of the most important things in all of human life is knowing the difference between "want" and "need." This is the basis for what he refers to as Self-Control, one of the five elements of a strong mind. YES - I am that slow!!! I managed to obsess over this idea for months before consciously connecting it with what Bikram has been saying all along. (Side note: I have these revelations about his comments more and more. I hear or read his words, they seem really straight-forward or simple, I store them in my memory, and then months or YEARS later I hear a great idea, or have one myself, and realize, oh my GOD, that is EXACTLY what Bikram said. Uncanny. I think he's on to something. Or a lot of somethings.)

Here are some of Bikram's words on "want" and "need": "Life can be heaven or it can be hell; it all hangs on those two words. If you can judge and make a decision between what you want and what you need, then you can have the best life."

IN CONCLUSION... I WANT to stay up late gabbing on the internet, but I NEED to get a good night's sleep, and the Rolling Stones are an excellent band. The end.

Morning Glory

So I am making a big effort to start practicing in the morning more! Right now, my schedule requires me to be at school at 10am on Mon/Wed/Fri, so the 7am Mon/Wed/Fri classes are perfect. When I started practicing, I basically worked nights, so I ALWAYS practiced in the "morning." And by morning, I mean noon. But those were the days when I ate dinner at 1am, so whatever.

Now "morning" means morning, as in getting up by 6am. It has been a long time since I did this!!

Schedule-wise, it is totally worth it, because I don't have to spend the whole afternoon stressing over whether I'll finish working in time to get to yoga class.

Practice-wise... ummm, I am just waiting for my internal clock to adjust. This morning was hilarious, because even 45 minutes into class, my body was just SO convinced that it was supposed to still be ASLEEP! Forget about balancing on one leg - I nearly fell over sideways out of TRIANGLE! Awesome. I also pretty much feel asleep DURING standing head to knee... I was in the middle of bringing my forehead down onto my knee and I saw the whole room kinda shift, like in a dizzy, falling-asleep way. Abort! Abort!

Yoga is still my favorite way to wake up. I just gotta start going to bed earlier...

On Patience

I love Bikram (the person) and I love his books. He makes me happy. So here is a comment from one of his books that made me laugh out loud the other day. (Emphasis is mine.)

"Suppose you have developed faith, self-control, determination, and concentration, but you still don't have the metal peace you seek. Why? You are lacking the fifth quality of mind. Your journey to Self-Realization will be a long one; it's not an overnight thing, like they FedEx it to you or something. This is a lifelong process you've just started; you are going to need patience."

This is so relevant to me, AND it is funny as hell. I can only imagine the headaches that Bikram's editor must have had when he was publishing this book... the man writes the same way he talks... I love it...

30 Days and Challenges

I guess the "30-day challenge" - 30 classes in 30 days - is a big part of the Bikram world.  Every studio has one.  The studio I'm at now started its Spring challenge last Wednesday.  I signed up because that's what I do.  I've never missed a studio challenge since I started really practicing.

I did my first 30 day challenge in September 2007.  Loved it.  Loved the yoga, loved the discipline, love the ritual of going to class every day.  My body felt great.  My mind was calmer.  So I kept going.  Went to (by my count) 380 classes over the course of the next 365 days.  Wasn't trying to prove anything, wasn't making a point,, wasn't doing it as a challenge.  I just like the yoga.  It's my practice.

Have had a LOT of major life changes since that Fall.  Started grad school the following year... moved across the country... left my studio... friends... family... my entire life, basically.  When I got to my new town, at the end of a cross-country drive, I went to the Bikram yoga studio and took class before going to my new apartment.  Got there just in time to jump into the beginning of a 60-day challenge.  Super.  The white-board sign-in for challengers keeps me honest.  I like it.

Finished 2008 strong, practicing like a lunatic.  Was back at my home studio over winter break, took maybe 13 classes there during the first week I was back, felt a little bit tired but mostly happy to be there.  Soaking it up.

These past couple months... grad school finally caught up with me and kicked my butt.  Lots of things happened in my head, good things and bad things.  But my practice... oh... I've felt like it was slipping away from me.  I haven't been working on crazy fun advanced postures like I used to do.  I've been running as hard as I can just to stay in one place, like someone turned up the treadmill too high and I'm about to go flying off the back.  I still miss my old teachers.  I miss my advanced classes.  I miss my balance.

This brings me to my point.  Over a 30-day period in March, I only practiced maybe 20 times.  Not enough.  That was a HUGE CHALLENGE.  It pretty much did me in.  My body felt terrible.  My sleeping patterns were all fucked up.  Some nights I couldn't sleep, some days I couldn't get out of bed.  I almost felt FAT, that dreaded f-word that I deliberately banished from my vocabulary a few years ago after being its slave for too long.  I missed the yoga like homesickness.

Last Wednesday, April 1st, the 30-day challenge at my studio started and of course I signed up.  It's only been going for 7 days now, which seems like a tiny blip after a year and a half of essentially daily practice.  I feel SO. MUCH. BETTER. Already.  Above all else, I feel this overwhelming sensation of relief.  Thank god.  I'm safe.  I'm back.  My practice is still here.  My yoga body is already re-emerging, so willingly.  It was all here the whole time.  I was here this whole time.  

I have so many thoughts and beautiful ideas and questions that are all tangled up together.  Not sure how to grab just one thread by itself.  Not sure how to talk about the yoga without talking about the things that are most personal to me, since they seem to have merged at some point when I wasn't watching.  

I wasn't really expecting this post to be so pensive.  I'm not exactly an "emo" kind of person.

To lighten the mood I will finish with an awesome comment taken verbatim from one of my favorite people: "If we could improved our postures every class, we became super yoga person too fast, it is boring. one step foward and two steps back, how am I feeling inside of me from yoga? WOW!"  :)

Well...

I pretty much abandoned my blog because I am too old-fashioned to do my journaling online - I have a nice little paper notebook that I carry around with me and that's where all my yoga notes go. Ah well. Still practicing every day tho! (381 classes in 365 days, woo hoo!!) Just moved across the country to a new city. I am INCREDIBLY homesick for my old studio but definitely starting to have fun at the new one. There are some cool people here.

I was soooo excited to lock out standing bow back in January. Oh man... I had no idea... that was only the beginning. Still got a looooong way to go! But that's the beauty of the practice - it is infinite. There's always, always more...

Still locking it!

So yesterday was my official breakthrough day for standing bow, when I locked out the kicking leg on both sides. I didn't consider it official until today, though, when I repeated this feat in the 3pm class. I had been kinda scared that it was a fluke and would never happen again!! But nope - I still had it today, which I think means it will probably stick around. YAY!!

I love having breakthroughs - they are so satisfying. I was talking to one of my yoga friends tonight who says that she gets chills every time something like that happens to her. I am pretty different - I think I always end up having my breakthroughs when I am really relaxed in class and not THINKING too hard, so then when something new does happen, it just comes really easily and unexpectedly, and I'm like "oh - wow - so that's what this pose feels like - this is pretty cool." I get much more excited AFTER class ends when my brain catches up to my body and I realize that I've done something extremely cool!

I was kinda sore today tho. My quads were really sore, which is unusual, but since those are the "LOCK THE KNEE"muscles I took that soreness as a very positive sign.

Heard something about Craig coming to give a posture clinic - in like 9 days from now!! Craziness abounds!! They haven't yet figured out what to do about work-study's like me, since they want to give priority to paying students, but honestly I'd like to see them keep me out. I just can't imagine they would have it in them to do that! If they don't let me sign up I will still totally show up with cash in hand and stand outside the door crying the whole day, and then Craig will be all like "what's wrong with that girl? you guys have a weird studio, I'm not coming back here anymore" and then they'll have to let me in so they don't look really bad. It's a foolproof plan. :-P

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!