Thursday, April 28, 2011

First Milestone Completed!

This afternoon we finally finished listening to everyone deliver their dialogue for Ardha Chandrasana, Half Moon Pose which is the first posture in the Bikram series. That means we have heard it a total of 430 times! Oh my lord. I could die happily without ever hearing that bloody part of the dialogue again........... Words cannot describe the mind numbing boredom that came with that exercise. As I've said before, I understand the reason behind it, and I think its brilliant that Bikram puts the time in to meet every single one of us individually, and its a lesson in patience etc etc but ......oh my expletive expletive expletive!

I couldn't post yesterday as there has been problems with the wifi internet in our rooms and so it mean't we couldn't get access online. Which is probably just as well as yesterday was probably my worst day to date and so it would have just been a post of bitching and ranting. Hmmm, only took 10 days for me to get the shits with all of this. Oy!

It didn't help that the night before we were up till 4 a.m. watching a Bollywood movie. I actually really enjoyed the movie but I struggled to get by the next day on only 3.5 hours sleep and so my temperment and frame of mind was not good.

I am starting to understand why some teachers said to me that though its an amazing life changing experience they would not choose to come back here. There are a lot of what I call "following like sheep" exercises which is just a necessity when trying to manage a large number of people like this, and you have to have the mentality of just "playing the game" and being where you need to be when you need to be etc etc.

Its a mind set and a great lesson in being present and just learning to deal with things as they are because thats what "is". E.g. We have to prepare our own meals and there is only one (repeat ONE) working microwave for 430 peops to share. Now you don't have to be a mathematician to realise that getting your food cooked at mealtimes is going to be a mission, so you just learn to prepare your meals in other ways. NO amount of complaining is going to magically make another microwave appear, though some people want to give it a good go!


Anyway, today is a different day and after a full night's sleep I'm feeling human again. I knew that for me the sleep deprivation was probably going to be the most difficult thing for me to cope with. My practice is coming along well and I have had a number of really strong classes which always feels good :-)

Emmy taught this mornings class and apparently will teach reguarly on Tuesday and Thursday mornings so that is something to look forward to. She is the only teacher who doesn't teach on the podium - its so high she says she feels like she is going to get a nose bleed up there. lol And she doesn't say the dialogue in the way we are to learn it, which keeps you really present as you can't predict when to go in and out of postures.

She said that when teaching a class she feels like a conductor leading an orchestra and the energy from all of us in the room dictates how to lead us. A nice thought, except we were all SO tired from the late night before I would imagine the energy we were giving off would not have made for very nice music at all..........yawn.......sigh..........

Some notes from this afternoon's class, that is class # 18 (Thursday) which Jim taught and I really enjoyed:

Eagle - to keep you hands / palms together and pull the elbows down BEFORE you interlock the fingers if you need to. This makes you use your shoulders to pull the elbows down rather than your hands. Also, which ever leg is on top after you've "twisted like ropes" that, that is the direction to twist your legs towards to get everything in one line. e.g. If your left leg is on top then you would twist your knees to the left.

Standing head to knee: That you have to bend forward even a few inches rather than just standing straight up and holding the knee (if you can't bend all the way forward). Its a forward bending posture and you have to get your body to start doing it to gain any improvement.

The same for camel, you have to keep your knees together at the start of the posture and go into it that way so that you don't create a habit of spreading the knees always thinking you are unable to do it.

He stressed that it is very important that we don't modify the postures to suit the body and any injuries / inflexibilities we might have. That we have to change our body to be able to do the posture. Therefore even if you can't do the posture fully you have to go as far as you can even if thats just going a few inches in the right direction.

Apparently if you took a dead body you would be able to put it into any yoga posture regardless of how inflexbile that person might have thought they were. This just shows how much of it is mind over matter and how our mind holds us back. Interesting eh? Not that I want to be doing yoga with dead bodies to prove it!

Well I think thats it for today. I'm having to come down to the lobby for wi-fi access so need to get back up to my room and organised for tonight's lecture. Lets hope its not a late one. Hmmm I think that may be my new mantra as I say it at at the end of every post!