Week 2 down!

It’s Friday night and we officially have finished our 10th class of the week. Ahhh.. and we got the night off! Yippie! Just one more class tomorrow morning and a couple of hours of CPR certification and week 2 will be OVER.

Emmy Cleaves, who has been practicing with Bikram for 35 years (I think), taught our first class Monday morning. I’m not positive how old she is, but the rumor is she’s upwards of 80+?? She’s in amazing health, and moves like a 30 year old. She definitely teaches a tough class. She is hard on us, but for very good reasons. She focuses on alignment of the body and doing the postures perfectly, 100% the right way. She has SO much knowledge of the postures and their benefits. I wish I had a notebook in class so I could’ve jotted some things down. And unfortunately (or well, maybe fortunately!), her classes all kicked my ass, and by the time I got out I could hardly speak.

The heat is definitely starting to crank, which is nice but challenging at the same time. I’m getting deeper into my postures, and struggling with the mind game that the heat plays on me. Actually, the heat isn’t what is killing me right now. My quad muscles are insanely fatigued. They are pretty strong thru the first half of the class. My balancing series postures have been pretty solid (although I haven’t really been able to hold standing Bow for too long). But by the time I get on the floor – particularly in floor bow, they don’t really want to do it. I’ve been pushing thru it and going on, but man, do they hurt!! I’m looking forward to resting them tomorrow afternoon and Sunday. They need a break.

It’s funny, at home, I usually take the 6am class. Obviously, I’m always more stiff in those classes, but I’ve always loved morning classes. Here it is a whole other story. My body in the morning classes here say, “What the fuck you doing?? I don’t think so!” It’s not that hard for me to listen to my body in those classes, because quite frankly, I don’t have a choice. My afternoon classes are where I can really get into my body, and where I really feel things changing.

Practicing in the newly dubbed “Haunted House” is giving me a real sense of my body in the postures. I haven’t been able to see myself in the mirror yet. I’m kind of happy about that because I’m learning to feel the alignment and focus more on myself and concentrate within. I look forward to the day I get up closer… I think it is going to be cool to see how far I have come once I get up there.

Oh yes, I’m on track to having one emotional day a week, or so it seems. They’ve been telling us that around week 4 or 5 that emotions would probably start flaring – but not me! Week 1, week 2… no problem finding the emotions for me!! Tim’s birthday was on Tuesday, and I just wanted to be with him and give him a birthday hug and kiss in person. Then the next day, I had my worst class so far… lots of muscle cramps, the heat was killer, and I just felt beat down. Talking to Tim quickly before the next afternoon class just got me really homesick and emotional again. Like I said, I just really felt beat up and drained, and it all came to head. Then somehow, with Bikram teaching, he pulled something out of me. I snapped out of my state of mind, had a pretty good class and was in great spirits for the rest of the night. We ended up finishing Half Moon at the PM lecture, got to sing happy birthday to Bikram’s mom, and had a little bit of entertainment from a fellow trainee to close the night. I’m seeing a pattern of the lows quickly being followed by some big, big highs.

I’ve been thinking about these emotional outbreaks I’ve been having and wondering where they are coming from. I have some thoughts on it… but I’m not quite sure I can express it. I have never really been alone in my life. I lived at home through most of college, always had steady boyfriends, then moved in with Tim before ever really being “on my own”. I do not regret any of this in any way whatsoever, don’t get me wrong. But right now… this is all about me. This is such an intense experience for me and for me only. I really can’t describe the experience properly for anyone to understand, so even trying to relate what I am going thru to Tim is hard. I guess it is a good thing, because I just have to deal with it on my own, and I am learning how to do it on my own, totally independent. And I suppose it is building me up to be more me than I ever have been before. Maybe it will be clearer in the end, but for now, that’s all I’ve got on it.

more to come later... I think I've found a way to get better (cheaper) internet access - woo hoo!

(me, Natasha, and Melissa - pre-class)

(Shannon (fellow Bostonian), me and Natasha)

(Natasha and I after the final class of Week 2... woo hoo!)