Bikram Yoga Class 17, last day of class series

Class 17, Saturday 5pm class, teacher T.

Semi- crowded.  Middle row, heat bearable.  Ironically, on this last class in this series, I end up neighboring next to teacher K, the one I like the least (or another way to put it, I found fault with the most).  I must confess, I was surprised at her lack of discipline, as well as her lack of skill in the practice.  Where's your  focus, teacher K?  Where's your discipline, your meditation?  Seriously?  Seeing her practice explains a lot.  I know this is a physical practice, but I think she needs a few more notches of spirit as well, and respect.

My Practice:

- biggest accomplishment was the Locust, and getting those legs up behind me while pressing down on the floor or whatever it is I was supposed to do.  Finally, FINALLY, those butt muscle are starting to work.  

- biggest setback was the half moon poses.  Somehow in getting all the adjustments I lost the integrity of the pose, and I’m just all over the place.  

- I also wussed out one the second set of Triangle, and sat them out.  Was I dizzy?  Nauseous? Seeing stars?  No, just tired.

Addendum to this post:

This was my 60th day, and 17th class at Bikram B____ Studio.  It was the most classes I have attended since I started Bikram a decade ago.  It was the most improved I have made in this yoga practice.  I introduced two people to the yoga, and it was the first time I really got some kind of friend attendance in this small world of mine.  I grew deeper in my practice, something I’ve been hoping for for years and never had the [fill in the blank - time? opportunity? motivation?] to do it.

I learned midway through the 60 days that I can be very picky about the teachers, that my pickiness directly affects the benefits I get out of that particular class, and that my pickiness stemmed not from my particular practice but from my concern for those two whom I introduced, that the should get a better experience and in my eyes their experience was not up to par.  And the next thought after that was, they are having their own experience, and my attempts at fixing it was only making things worse not better.   However, I stick to my belief that my criticisms are not unwarranted, and that there is something greatly significant about seasoned teachers.  Teachers are just... important.

I also found that periodically through the 60 days, I would get extremely tired, like all of my muscles were tired and stiff, and I just felt empty inside.  I was not sure if that was just part of the rebuilding, or if I was pushing myself too hard.  But I hardly went several days in a row, maybe three or four at the most.  A couple of times I could have drank more water.  

Next Up.....

I have a second pass to a yoga studio that is up north a few miles.  They’re not strictly a Bikram studio, as they teach Vinyasa classes as well.  But I am reassured by seeing that many of the teachers are training in Bikram, certified Bikram, as well as Baptiste yoga.  I look forward to this experience.  I have read the reviews of this place, and they are far better than the ones for this previous studio.  

I look forward to returning one day to my original studio in R-------, the beautiful one.  But I feel I must give this one up north a try, at least, right?  I deny my pleasure for the sake of curiosity.

Bikram Yoga, Class 16

Class 16, Thursday evening 830pm class, Teacher L.  Yay for teacher L!  Was greatly looking forward to it.

Good instructor, though I was ashamed to realize I still found fault with her teaching - too slow!  Class not terribly crowded.  Found myself in the front row, happily so.  Quite a beginners class, as there were a few, more than usual, and she paced the class with them.  

My practice

- poses still adjusting (meaning, I'm falling out and generally doing a terrible job) 

- did standing bow longer than usual, gladly.  Found it better to go into the pose slowly, gradually, not jump into it like the dialogue makes it sound

- did all the poses, all the second sets.  Not dizzy, just hot and sweaty, somewhat weak. Did fall out quite a bit though.  Like my balance was off.  

Bikram Yoga, Class 15

Class 15, Wednesday evening, 830pm class

I bit the bullet and took the class with Teacher K, whom I'll merely dismiss and focus on my own practice. How's that for maturity?  

Super hot class!  I at first put my mat in the front row, then after sitting in the uncomfortably hot room for a few minutes, moved my mat to the middle row, knowing that I won't be staying in the class the whole time.  There will be sitting involved.  

Hot class, I tried to not be distracted by my criticism of her teaching. Really it does not bother me, but I have two friends who are just starting the practice, and so my critiques are how new students will be discouraged by Teacher K's nonsensical instructions.  So in a way, it was a distracting class.  On a positive note, I let it glide off my back, no harm done to me.  

My Practice: 

- better at the triangle, could hold it this time

- better at standing separate leg head to knee, where I can actually touch my forehead to my knee without having to bend the knee.  Yay for me.  

- during one pose, I think the awkward pose, Teacher K starts playing her games, talking and talking and deliberately keeping us in the pose, and I just stepped out of it.  She disrespects the students, she doesn't deserve respect as a teacher.  This is already hard work, why play games?  This is a beginner's class!

- realization about the Du vs Ren meridians (or in plain yoga terms, forward bends and back bends) 
- my trouble with the Ren meridian poses (forward bends) might not just be from a weakness of the Ren, but perhaps an exuberance of the Du.  Less independence, my girl, just try and bond, will you?  So, in the future, I will try to focus on Bonding vs Independence. Just the thought makes me want to cry.  

Bikram Yoga, Class 14

Class 14, Monday evening March 21, 8:30pm class, teacher L.

Awesome teacher L, my first time with her.  Patient, articulate, calm, seasoned, knowledgeable, warm humor. We like her.  I believe she is my favorite out of them all here!  She stopped and demonstrated a pose, sounding like a correction, not like a scolding like some others.

I placed my mat in the front row today, don't want t bother with tussling for a space in the mirror.  Right of center, maybe two space from the teacher.  

My Practice:

Good practice, no sitting out of any postures.  Felt weaker in some pose than before. Is this all part of the growing process?

A friend was taking the class for the first time, so I was half keeping my eye on her, encouraging her, but she never looked at me, just at the teacher.  But said friend is a seasoned yoga person (yogini?), so why would she be looking at me?  

Bikram Yoga, Class 13

[Okay, I confess to laziness in posting these, er, posts, about the classes.  The blurbs are true to the day I took the class, just didn't get them up in time.  So they are going up en masse.]

Class 13, March 20, a Sunday evening last class at 5pm, Teacher Ch.

Good class, heat manageable 

Teacher good, seasoned, interactive, at least compared to other teachers at this studio.

My Practice:

Sat out triangle second set, otherwise all right.

Again an exercise in tolerance, patience  with people around me, fellow students, learning that discipline is more important than the perfect conditions, the perfect mat placement, perfect view of the mirror. More important things.

Bikram Yoga, Class 12

Class 12, back to the usual.  Avoiding the disappointing teacher K, I made the spontaneous decision to take an evening class this evening.  One where timing just worked out right.  Plus I've given up Nextflix instant streamng for Lent (go ahead and laugh - just wait until you have no television or cabel access for years on end, only to get the cheapest all-you-can-watch movies and television series instantly accessible to your computer, Wii consol AND iPad whenever you want, and tell me it isn't addicting as ever).  Checking the schedule, saw it was an old school, seasoned teacher up, and was glad to go.  The constant slew of  youngins with their machine gun dialogue is getting tiresome.  So, off to class we go at 7:30 to make the 8:30pm class.  And it was a good class, the heat back to the proper temperature, me in the front, crowd heavier but not unbearable, and a teacher I could learn from and get a proper yoga session out of.  Glad to be back.

MY PRACTICE

Despite the added heat, I managed to not skip any poses, though a couple I did not hold the entire time.  In the beginning i did nothing but fall out of all the poses.  Even the stick pose I could not hold - what is up with that?  I wonder how annoying it is to have someone next to you fall out of the same pose a dozen times, and just keep getting back into it over and over again.  I feel sorry for the girls next to me.  

I am too at the stage where i am starting to have difficulty with poses that normally are quite easy for me.  I think its because I am not doing them properly, and with muscles building from other poses, I am not trying harder and the poses are no longer my nice easy landing pads.  

There has been a bit of an addition to my practice, in the form of irritations.  I see the practice as increasing patience, and tolerance, or as I have lately been reading, a deliberate ignoring of the little things.  Little things.  Like the student, always a woman to my left, creating her own class, as if the teacher is not there, as if she  can go into the poses whenever she feels like it, 5, sometimes 10 or more seconds after everyone else has gone.  Different people, but always on my left.  Bizarre.  Or another little thing like the personal space of yoga mats.  I tend to get there early, a new habit I mysteriously picked up recently, so I am one of the first people in the room, one of the first to put my mat down.  I place it somewhat strategically, with plenty of space for others.  But for some reason, perhaps because we are social humans not solitary tigers that we like to stick close together, and someone always seems to put their mat awfully close to mine, and the space between me and my new neighbor is magnitudes smaller than the space on the new neighbor's other side.  Uh... space?  Evenly spaced?  I like to think of myself as an atom, and we should all just space ourselves out accordingly, evenly, among the room.  But no.  Don't know why.  Of course, it could be me, since it's one of those things that EVERYONE is doing to me... yeah okay, it's probably me...

Bikram Yoga class 11

Today's class was a disturbing.  Not because the room temperature maybe reached 95 degrees, but most likely was under that.  Not because teacher K continued in the class-isolating rapid-fire delivery of instructions.  Not because numerous people breached all kinds of yoga etiquette, like coming in late, blocking students behind them, walking out of class, leaving their phones on in class that went off in the middle of a pose.  Not even because little teacher K could not handle the infractions.

What was disturbing was the racist remark she made to the class trying to explain why these breaches of etiquette were happening, stating, "There are signs on the door... unless maybe you just can't read English."  And the fact that a few of the offenders were not blonde haired, blue eyed fair skinned women, but had dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and of Asian descent.  And most likely spoke English as a second language.

WTF.

The sad part is that these women, and other men who were in the class, who do not speak English as their primary language, are probably used to that kind of remark.  I, only being half Asian, am not.  And I am greatly offended for them.

Even more so, is the fact that this teacher, little K, did not take responsibility for whether the students knew the rules of the class or not, but decided to blame the students for the etiquette breaches.

In my old studios, the teachers always - ALWAYS - gave a brief summary of the rules before every class: don't show up late, try not to leave the class but if you do wait until the pose is over before reentering the room, etc etc.  You know when you go see a movie they AWAYS make some brief clip on turning off your phone?  Always. Because we are human, and even if we do kind of know, we sometimes forget.  We often forget.  So if a rule is important, it is kinder to remind us.  If you want to take responsibility for the class.

But these teachers, at this studio, do not.  And when it leads up to this kind of eruption and takes the nasty turn with teachers resorting to making racist remarks - something is wrong, really really f*cking wrong.  And even if calling it "racist" may be extreme, it is still making demeaning remarks to the students and, again, the teacher not taking responsibility for the class.

At any rate, so the teacher was little K (I'll refrain from calling her "racist K"), 10am class.  Temperature below par.  Class semi-full.

MY PRACTICE
Still feeling weak, I did not make it through 100% of the class, sitting out of about three poses.  I fell out a lot, though I still was able to reach a deeper point in the poses than before.  I just could not hold them.

So that is it.  That is all I want to say for today's class.  A great disappointment.  Will try to go again tomorrow, only because there is a different teacher and I'd like to regain some confidence in this studio.  Have eight more classes on this pass before I am free.

Bikram Yoga, class 10 (after a 3-week absence)

It has been three weeks since my last class (whoa, that's starting to sound like a Catholic confession - "forgive me Bikram for I have sinned....").  Three.  Weeks.  !  Don't ask me what happened.  There are excuses, but then again there are no excuses, nothing real hardcore at any rate - no exciting photojournalistic assignments in the mid East, no sweeping national book tour across the continent, no broken bones or infectious diseases, no mournful passing of love ones.  Nope, I was perfectly capable, physically and, er, locally, to take my Class 10 at any time these past three week.  I just... did not.  So don't be like me, and skip three weeks.  But then again, be like me, and if you skip three weeks, just go back.


But if you go back after three weeks, you will pay for it.  Painfully.  Achingly.  Mournfully.  Not just during the truant three weeks, getting fatter and blobbier, moodier, stiff muscles returning, that incessant need to stretch this leg or that shoulder, feeling internally like a stuffed bloated suckling waiting to be cooked.  


This post-Class 10 has been painful, in the past few hours since the final "namaste."  I cannot recall ever feeling so crappy after class.  Everything is tight.  Yes, in that just-worked-out way, but somehow worse, with an added queasiness to it.  The class was particularly humid, and I did sit out during the peak of the standing series, the Triangle.  I drank the usual amount of water, sweating the usual amount of sweat.  So I am not sure what to attribute this worse-ness to, other than... just don't skip three weeks of Bikram.


Anyway, so the Set Up.  Class Ten (yay double digits!  Anyone remember turning ten years old, what a big deal it was, finally a double digits set of candles?  Was it as big a deal with you as it was for me?), noon on a Thursday, because I just could not get myself together in time for the 10am class.  Teacher was cheerleader-energetic K.  Yay K.  I stood in my usual spot, middle row, left of podium, just left of the Horribly Unflattering Light.   Class was lightly attended, could have been a 10am class.  Where are all the people?  Skipping their three weeks as well?


MY PRACTICE
I expected a certain amount of set back from the last practice, less strength, less flexibility, certainly in my shoulders.  And that was accurate, in some ways.  But apparently I did not entirely lose the gains I made in those previous nine classes.  Some milestones, like being able to lock out my knee and kick out in Standing Head to Knee  - I actually did it!   Both times!  Or all four times, even!  And again, being so excited that I could kick out my leg into that L-shape like Linda, I did not bother to try to keep it up!  Yay, I'm kicking out!  Wooo hoo!  


My Locust poses, both right and left legs plus both legs together, were right back where I left them last, in that I'm-just-starting-to-get-this phase where I discovered what muscles to lock and use to get those legs up.  


And Toe Stand! I'm still doing Toe Stand, like I've been doing it all my life!  Couldn't even begin to tell you why!  As another Bikram blogger suggested, I don't bother with the steadying of my fingertips on both sides, then bringing one hand up at a time, for that makes me unbalanced. I just get set, then bring both hands up together, and voila - I'm up.  Enough that the teacher tries to correct me - no way.  Sorry, I'm balancing on Toe Stand, lady, like I've never done in the past ten (twelve?) years doing Bikram, just leave me to my tiny victory.