Saturday, May 19, 2007

I'm Halfway Home

This Wednesday was our official halfway point. It has also been my darkest thus far. I have cried and struggled with my mind, my emotions, my physical strength (or lack there of), my uterus (I'm sure some ladies out there can sympathize with the tiredness and unbearable pain that graces us once a month. Try dealing with it through 990 minutes of yoga in a week.) I have prayed for death several times with the utmost sincerity. Bikram often says something like "Don't worry, you're not going to die. You're not so lucky to die so soon." I challenge that statement. He also says if you die doing yoga you go straight to heaven. We'll see.

They've turned up the heat in the room and people are dropping like flies. It's almost funny. I said almost. It's like a giant game of Whack-a-Mole, one second someone is standing there, the next second...they're gone. I've been one of them…I've had to sit down quite often in the last few days, I'm not sure I have the words to explain what exactly happens while I lose my mind. Fatigue takes over, my brain feels like it's yanked itself out of my head - through my ear - and is crawling toward the nearest exit to get a single breath of air and I just sit there and watch it like a bad acid trip because I'm too exhausted to do anything else. The scary thing is, I've felt pretty good and have been taking care to eat and drink well, and I'm a pretty healthy person. I'm blaming the extra difficulty in coping on Aunt Flo's bad timing. Back home, when I was feeling the effects of PMS, I simply wouldn't go to class, because that was the logical, intelligent choice. Here, there is no choice. You go to class. Period. Pardon the horrible pun. You have a sucky class, but you go to class nonetheless. You also do not leave the room. Even if you have to lay down on your mat the whole time because you just don't have the strength, you lay there, sweating, crying, cursing, wimpering. You don't leave the room. (Two acceptable excuses for leaving the room: puking and pooping.)

I suffered the effects of loss of minerals and/or dehydration this morning (Thursday), my body began cramping up in the middle of the night. My feet, my calves, the muscles around my ribs and torso. Every time I moved, another cramp would try to paralyze me. I didn't sleep a wink. I decided in the morning that I didn't want to end up in the hospital, so I chose to speak to one of the instructors and we decided that I would not attend the morning class. Sometimes you just have to heed the red flags that go up. Another woman in our class was taken to the hospital earlier in the week for dehydration, she stays in the room next to ours, I wasn't around when the ambulance came to get her, but my roommate said it was pretty gnarly…she was severely cramped up from head to toe, almost unable to function. It was because of her that I paid a little more attention to my own symptoms and decided to err on the side of caution.

By next week, the heat is supposed to be near unbearable temperature, I hope that I am back to full strength before then. I pray.

Physically and mentally, this is the most difficult thing I've ever done. Some people seemed to be less fazed by it, some more. There is quite a variety of roller coasters rides here at the torture chamber, with only one theme in common – you have no fucking clue which one you've just sat your ass down on. It might be bumper cars, it might be spinning tea cups or it might be that one that flips you around and loop-d-loop, while you're sitting upside down and backwards and doesn't stop until you throw up at least four times.

I thought I could do anything after I jumped out of an airplane a few months ago. After I get through this, I will be able to reclaim that statement for real.

I've noticed more and more over this past week that people are starting to miss/crave human contact. Although we are just inches away from each of our 305 other classmates (yes, we lost a few) most of the day, many of us are away from loved ones, husbands, wives, kids, cats and are missing healing and compassionate human touch. This week in our final savasana it wasn't a surprise at all that you would be laying there with your eyes closed and the person next to you would just grab your hand and hold it. It happened to me twice and I initiated it once. Our posture clinics are becoming a triage of sorts, sorting victims, providing the necessary attention – foot and hand massages – to relieve the cramping and soreness and pain. And just to feel someone's empathetic hands on your pathetic feeling body.

Although this is our halfway point, week six is supposed to be the pinnacle of this whole training…I can't even think about it right now. I've found myself saying things like "one day at a time"…12 step program.

This Sunday brings a well deserved break, scuba diving and surfing…and not one single thought about yoga. Right.


(By the way, if you ever find yourself in New York, go to John Salvatore's Bikram yoga class. Even if you hate yoga and you never plan on doing it again…it is worth the experience to be in the same room as this man. He is by far the most hilarious person I have ever had the pleasure of meeting and such an incredible teacher.)

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Bootcamp for the Soul

I was prepared for the physical nature of this yogic exploration, but the exposure and wringing out – literally and figuratively - of the deepest, darkest places in my soul have been somewhat unexpected, at least in their intensity.

Week 3 was too busy to write, I jotted a few notes of things I wanted to say at a later time, when I actually HAD time and the next thing I knew the week was over. Time is going very quickly as we are kept extremely busy. The days all blend together in a Ground Hog Day kind of sense, you can't help but laugh at the monotony of some of it. Get up, do yoga, eat, do posture clinic, do yoga again, eat, do more posture clinic, sleep. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. I can't remember whom I spoke with on which day, whom I've met before and whom I haven't (all of us still don't even know each other and aren't entirely sure when we pass someone smiling at us on the street, if it's because they are in our class or if they're just friendly).

Things I've noticed in the last couple of weeks:

Some women are completely clueless to the fact that the very short shorts they wear during practice, shows a little more of their anatomy then they might prefer to reveal. I have seen so much pussy in the last 4 weeks, I don't even know what to say. (A note to guys who want a cheap thrill, take a Bikram yoga class.)

There are so many people who haven't a clue what the words respect and discipline mean. It's sad. And frustrating. But, I don't have patience, so I guess this is my path to learning it by dealing with some of the ill-mannered, undisciplined people in this class.

I'm having really crazy, extremely vivid dreams every night. They tend to be completely nonsensical by the time I'm conscious and am thinking back on them, but during my slumber, they seem so real and practically 3-dimensional. The only other times I've had dreams this dramatic is when I've been experimenting in the expansion of my mind by alternative and/or commonly prohibited means. This yoga is a trip.

I run the risk of sounding like I've gone completely schizophrenic, but I'll say it anyway, just the other night as I was dozing off, I swear to God, I heard a voice, as clear as day, shout out my name with such exclamation it was as though they had been looking for me for days or weeks even and finally just bumped into me on the street unexpectedly. Only this street was some astral plane somewhere in the cosmos. I hesitate to say I heard it inside my head, because that does sound crazy and it's not at all what it felt like, it was just there in my altered state of consciousness. I was so surprised by it that I feel I was jarred from that place or space, so unfortunately I didn't hear anything else. But, with as tripped-out as I've been feeling lately, hopefully I'll manage to have another astral encounter again soon. Have I already mentioned that this yoga is a trip?

I've become hooked on the coconut ice cream at a local ice cream shop. They open at 6:30 am and close at 11:00, this is great news for me and my schedule.

There was finally a memorial for Don Ho, I didn't go, but I heard it was nice.

I just learned that box jellyfish infest the shores about 7 days after a full moon, leading warnings to be posted for the beach bound. I still have not found out why they do so, but I find it quite fascinating nonetheless because apparently you can set a watch to their timeliness. Weird.

Quieting the mind is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. I am a wanderer. During yoga, mostly because we're doing it so damn much of it, I find myself thinking about an array of different things. Food, the ocean, whose fart it is that's stinking up the room and what the hell they could have possibly eaten for dinner, music, sex. Sex is a pretty dominant thought on the wandering days. Well, I'll be honest, sex is a dominant thought most days for me, yoga or no yoga. I consider myself to be a very sexual person. I like it and I'm not going to pretend I don't. I'm not slutty, not just anyone gets invited in to my personal space. Why I'm thinking about it so much here, who knows, maybe it's because it's been so long, maybe it's because I'm constantly twisting and turning myself into funny little positions that make me think back to earlier, enjoyable times when I was doing kind of the same stuff … only naked … except maybe for a pair of knee socks, just for fun.

Sigh.

But back to quieting the mind. It is said that humans have anywhere from 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts per day. No wonder it's hard to quiet that shit down. Not to be misunderstood, I like my thoughts, but boy is it hard to shut them off when you just want a little moment, even 20 seconds in Savasana, of silence. Nothingness. Peace. Calm. I never realized how much I drift, until I tried not to think for 20 solid seconds. They often say that Savasana is the hardest posture, because humans tend to find such difficulty in attempting to still not only their body during those short moments, but also their mind.

My body is getting so stiff that my postures are getting worse. This was to be expected, but it's still frustrating. Many of us are worse than beginning students right now since our hamstrings seem to have turned into concrete blocks and our flexibility has become non-existent. My arms feel like they are going to snap off at the shoulders during half moon pose and I'll be left standing there like the Venus de Milo in hot pants. From what I understand, there is no breakthrough point during the training, pretty much everyone's practice is going to continue to suck until the end of the 9 weeks and only after we leave and begin to conduct our practice in a more normal manner do we see the progress we've actually made. This I cannot wait to see.

There are so many more things to write, but as usual, my mind is beginning to wander and I'm feeling quite lethargic today – today's class was the first one in which I wasn't bouncing off the walls afterward – so I'm off to an astral plane to quiet my mind, maybe collide with some cosmic mind and have some mind blowing sex since I can't get it any other way right now. (Aside from drugs, alcohol and cigarettes being forbidden during this time, sex is a no-no as well.)

Sigh.