A Bikram First

Well I’ve experienced another Bikram first: I have officially taken a class that afterwards I regretted going to. I can honestly say that I’ve never regretted attending a class, despite the pain, suffering, exhaustion, etc. that I suffered…until today.

See, I had a headache today. I’m prone to them. And it’s not one of those headaches that you can take some painkillers for, take a nap and go to sleep- it’s a gnarly, hormone induced headache that tends to occur around the same time each month. And there’s really nothing I can do for them.

I got home from work today and the headache was mild- maybe a 3 on a scale of 1-10. I figured a session might help, seeing as how exercise tends to relieve pain and endorphins are always good to have floating around. So I went to yoga. But as I was laying in Savasana before class began and listened to the chipper conversations of those around me, I grew increasingly annoyed and agitated and my head started to hurt more. Not wanting to look like a pansy though, I chose to stay in the class. Horrible mistake.

The thing about these particular headaches is that they’re exacerbated by frequent moving of the head. You’d think I would have remembered this before class started. No dice. Every single pose hurt. The back bends were excruciating and every time I bent my head below my chest I felt like I was going to have an aneurysm.

By the time we reached the floor I thought I was going to die. I didn’t do a single sit-up with the proper amount of power, I didn’t even do the bow pulling pose in the floor series. Camel pose hurt me and I refused to even try Rabbit pose since I still can’t do it right so all the pressure is on my head.

By the time class ended I wanted to gouge my eyes out and scramble my brains around in the hopes that it would alleviate the pain.

I skedaddled to the locker room, changed my clothes, went to my car and just sat there. I was pissed off, not because I had a crappy class, but because I didn’t listen to my body before class started. I should have put my pride aside and walked out of that room and gone right home and gone to bed. But I stayed, I toughed it out, and now my head hurts infinitely more than it would have if I hadn’t pushed it.

As far as resolutions go, my yoga resolution has definitely already failed. i was out sick on Thursday and Friday and Sunday I was slightly hungover. And by slightly I mean it hurt to function. BUT! I have succeeded in my reading endeavor! I finished Into Thin Air last night, a week ahead of schedule! Also, I finished the whole book (330 pages) in a week, which puts to shame the fact that it took me a whole month to read The Great Gatsby (185 pages). Either way, Into Thin Air was excellent, and now I’m on the prowl for my next read!

No Mistakes!

Crunch Time

Haven’t check in with my blog in a while so I thought I’d take the opportunity to give a few updates about my resolutions.

Basically, I’m sucking so bad! I’ve done three yoga classes this month (two of which were this week) and there’s only 8 days left in the month! I’ve embarked on a mini challenge and am determined to squeeze in all my required sessions by the end of the month, which of course means I’ll be doing yoga pretty much every day for the next week. What could possibly be wrong with that? Let me tell you what’s wrong with it: I hurt. My back hurts, my legs hurt, my neck hurts, even one of my fingers hurts. And I’m not really sure why. I think I’m getting sick again (really? twice in one year- that NEVER happens to me). Indeed, I fell asleep last night and could barely move my body I ached so much. I woke up this morning and my head was all stuffy. Not to mention that I’ve been battling a nasty headache off and on for the past few days. It’s possible that the fact that I’ve been riding my bike to work in the 30 degree weather is contributing to this, but one gets the common cold from a virus, not cold weather, so that’s unlikely (I gave up driving to work for Lent; I’m not Catholic, but I believe that self-reflection and sacrifice are important virtues and should be practiced. Plus it’s a lot cheaper than paying $18 to park every day).

Another reason doing yoga for 10 days in a row sucks is because apparently my yoga studio offered a deal on Groupon that allowed a huge discount to newbies for a certain amount of classes. Talk about a shit show. The room is so crowded that there are 4, sometimes 5 rows (as opposed to the normal 3), people in the back row have no chance of seeing themselves in the mirror, newbies are unprepared for the heat that’s exacerbated by the increased amount of bodies, and parking is a bitch and a half. Sure, I love when newbies come to yoga- makes me feel like a bad ass when I can do a particular pose and sort of show off. I’m all for new students- just not all at once. Last night’s class (with Jeremy, who’s my favorite instructor after Justine and Elle) had 56 students. FIFTY-SIX! In a room that’s built to have maybe 35-40 people comfortably. Which I guess explains why we’re not comfortable.

Speaking of newbies, I brought a friend to yoga last night! Like me, she works in the Capitol, although she works in another member’s office. She used to do Bikram when she lived in Colorado but stopped for a few years. When she found out I practiced she was excited about starting again. I told her I was going last night at 6:30 and she decided to come along. She did alright but I could definitely tell she was beginning from scratch (all the more reason for me to not lose momentum!). There were a lot of poses she couldn’t do (mainly in the balancing series) but I especially noticed that she wasn’t doing well in the floor series where she looked miserable. Finally, after I noticed she’d run out of water, I offered her my second bottle (which wasn’t an easy thing to do considering I was nearing the end of my water supply). Later when I asked her what had happened she confessed to not having eaten or drank anything all day. ALL DAY! She had half a cup of coffee at 5:30am and nothing else. That was seriously 14 hours without sustenance (if you can even call coffee sustenance). Talk about a rookie mistake! Still I’m glad to have found a yoga buddy who will go with me and force me to go even when I don’t want to. The biggest problem that I see is that she loves 6am classes, and as I’ve mentioned time and time again, I’m not a morning person. By any means.

I’m determined to finish my damn classes and will take it as a lesson for the future about the perils of waiting until the last minute to do things. They say you should have a reward for yourself when you complete these types of things, and I’ve already got mine in mind. My friend’s engagement party is in a few weeks and as the Maid of Honor I feel it’s my duty to look fabulous. Thus, a shoe shopping spree is in order! Can’t wait until I finish my mini-challenge so I can head to Macy’s and check out the spring collections!

As far as my book resolution goes, I’m doing alright in that area. I stopped reading that book about feminism, mainly because it put me to sleep and didn’t quite pique my interest for a long enough time for me to really get into it. Saturday though I went to Barnes and Noble with my mom and she bought me a couple new books that looked pretty good. So far I’ve read about 120 pages out of maybe 350 in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air which is about the 1996 disaster on Mt. Everest. Apparently the author was actually there and so he wrote a sort of historical/adventure book about it- it’s pretty good so far. It’s not so gripping that I can’t put it down, but I can stay engaged with it enough to read a chapter or two before bed each night. I don’t have plans for after yoga on Saturday so I’m thinking I may shower up, have some lunch, slip into my pj’s and lay in bed and read all day. Tell me that doesn’t sound fabulous.

No Mistakes!

So Incredibly Unmotivated

I have been so unmotivated to do anything lately. All I want to do is come home from work and sleep or watch TV. I haven’t done yoga in over a week, I started running again yesterday, but I’ve got a run today and I have no desire to go and do it, despite the fact that it’s only 5 minutes and a majority of it is walking.

I know I should go, and a part of me wants to go, but a bigger part of me doesn’t want to go.

Any tips for regaining and/or maintaining motivation. I’m in need of some serious advice here.

Resolution Check-In

Alright folks, January is over and I have done well with maintaining my resolutions. I’d say overall I earned a B- with regards to my resolutions.

I did 8 sessions of yoga this month, four classes short of my goal, but I’m okay with that since I was sick and down for the count for two weeks. My goal for February is to do 10 sessions since it’s a shorter month and I’ll be out of town during a long weekend. I think in order to do better at fulfilling my yoga resolution I need to embrace the idea of weekend classes. I’m pretty averse to weekend classes- in fact, during my challenge I think only 2 or 3 of my 30 classes were weekend sessions. I normally prefer to do yoga during the week so that I can have my weekends free and clear, but then I’m just bored on the weekends and don’t do anything anyway. So I’ll try and incorporate one weekend session into my routine.

I finished The Great Gatsby! I literally finished on January 30th- it took me an entire month to read 180 pages. Awful. To be honest though I tried to read almost every night but I was so tired that I only made it a few pages each time. I enjoyed the book overall, however I totally missed the last few pages. I read them, I just didn’t get them because I was falling asleep at the end, which is completely unfair to the book and pretty much robs me of all that the book has to offer since everyone I’ve talked to says that the end is the best part. I’ll have to reread the ending, and probably the whole book since my reading of it was so piecemeal.

I’ve started my next book already though! It’s called Big Girls Don’t Cry and it’s a book about the 2008 presidential election and what it did for women’s rights. It focuses on all the women involved with the election: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Katie Couric, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and how their very presence in the election process was a huge milestone for Feminism. It’s not a novel, obviously, but it’s really interesting so far. I would consider this book a substantially intellectual book which fits my reading list criteria. It’s significantly longer than The Great Gatsby so I’m going to have to be more disciplined about reading. I think I’ll dedicate at least 20 minutes every night before bed to my reading endeavors, and at least one hour every Saturday and Sunday to reading. Of course, once you start reading you tend to get on a roll- hopefully I’ll work up enough momentum on the weekends that I can finish the book soon!

So that’s my report on the progress of my New Years Resolutions. The common denominator between the two that I’m seeing is that I need to utilize my free time on the weekends in order to accomplish my goals, instead of cramming everything into the work week (when I’m already exhausted from work) and then sleeping on the weekends. Basically what I need to work towards is better balance between the weekdays and the weekends.

No Mistakes.