Restless in Savasana

I used to be really good at savasana. At the end of every intensive power yoga class, I would happily collapse into my corpse pose and sometimes even fall asleep. It was not a problem for me to stay still for 5-10minutes and observe the trickles of electric energy moving up and down my body.

Not so with Bikram yoga. I'm still not so sure about the savasanas in between each seated postures. I understand what they are meant for theoretically, but practically I don't know if it works as well as they claim (to release the blood flow in the body after each compression posture). In the beginning I really disliked them, since they felt disruptive to the flow of the sequence. Now I have gotten used to them, and welcome the break after each posture. It's not that the seated postures are particularly difficult, just that the heat of the room really gets to me.

It's the savasana at the end of the class that's been particularly challenging for me.  So far I have been feeling totally restless at the end of class 80% of the time, with the desire to get up and run around, do a headstand, wiggle like a worm, go into urdhva dhanurasana. The most I could do though was to wiggle around until the teacher leaves the room. It seems like the 26 posture-sequence, with kabbalah baati breathing exercise at the end, is not an energy grounding practice. I could feel the heat generated by my body from the practice clashing with the heat of the room.

On the other hand, I always sleep very well after a Bikrams class (I practice in the evenings). That's one of the reasons why I keep going back. We'll see if my wiggle problem goes away after a few more weeks of practice.

This energy/emotion business is so interesting. Yoga and the heat really stir up a lot of emotions and thoughts for me, but not in a bad way. I think I'm the type who needs frequent, strong doses of external stimulations in the body in order to drive away the negative, depressing energy within me. The scientist in me wishes I could study this subject scientifically somehow, but I have no idea how this "energy/mood" can be objectively measured and quantitated. Ah well, someone smarter than me will invent the method/instrument some day.

Back to hot yoga

I finally managed to drag my ass to bikram yoga class... I would prefer to take up an Ashtanga regime, but I have to take into account of studio location, convenience (times of day I can go to class), and price. Based on these criteria, Bikram won out. It is really good to get back into some sort of exercise routine.. my body needed that. The first class I went, my quads were really hurting from stretches. I had no clue that my quads were that tight.... Shows how little I know about my body. My hamstrings also ached from forward bend stretches, but that was an enjoyable ache. However I'm not exactly sure if I should enjoy this kind of stretching aches. A positive thing is that my calves also get stretched in the process, so hopefully I won't be getting calf cramps in the middle of the night any more. My feet do still get cramps during class though (in Eagle pose and pashimottanasana A), so I still do carry some tension in the body. Hopefully they will go away soon.

My cardio has always been terrible, and in the Bikram room often my heart/lung feel the intensity more than my muscles. Even though this is not "true cardio" (not like running, swimming or jogging), I figure it'll still help my heart improve a little bit before I get started on real cardio workouts. It's been tremendously difficult to get started on any kind of exercise routine for me so even a baby step it a move towards the right direction.

My focus really should be on strengthening rather than stretching (except for the calves of course). If possible I should try to haul my ass into the gym as well.

I've been feeling less anxious than before.. probably a combination of yoga and an improvement to my current situation. I don't think I should take a break from yoga for such a long time in the future... was really sinking back into the feeling of anxiety, tension, helplessness, fear, and low self worth. Exercise is as essential as food and sleep in life.

Goal for the holidays: try to relax

Hot yoga has been really awesome. I really love the strengthening aspects of it, and the heat.. sweet sweet heat (plus the asana sequence of course) warm me up internally and externally in this perpetually snowy weather. When a pose is held, the pose actively makes me tense up everything, so that in rest poses, I relax and let the blood circulation rush to areas where I normally permanently hold tension all day long. In a yoga class when I lie on the floor I can really feel that it is one of the few moments when I am relaxing as opposed to most of the other moments during the day. I'm lucky that the studio happens to have an American teacher with amazingly well enunciated crystal-clear instructions that kicks me in the butt and gets me through the two hours trying my best. The other day the tram was delayed 20 minutes due to too much snow and I went to a class with Swedish instructions instead. I didn't understand a thing, but it didn't matter. The teacher had a voice meant for gentle hatha or restorative yoga. I couldn't hold still for most of the challenging balancing poses. I guess manner is everything for a Bikram teacher, Japanese ham sandwich or not (I'm pretty sure that phrase got taken out of the Swedish instructions). In the moments of savasana in class, I felt pretty close to total relaxation. But I still miss my yoga studio back home in Vancouver dearly, as it is a really special, heart-warming space with lots of compassion and care.

One of day of "work" and it'll be holiday time for moi! Was still really uptight the second last day of work because every day I don't feel like I get enough accomplished (most of the time I'm just figuring out how I should do things rather than actually doing things). As I mentioned in the title: I need to try to actively make myself relax over the holidays before I die of cortisol overload!

Yoga is not a synonym for stretching!!!!

I have a bunch pretty fit friends who bike, run, hike, swim, run marathons, compete in triathalons, rock climb, kick box, ski at a competitive level, lift heavy weights, you name it. When I told them I've switched from mix martial arts to yoga, to them I sound like I've gone from an abled-bodied person to a wheel chair- bound granny. I notice they way they see look at me, they manner they talk to me have subtly transformed. Some of them would gingerly ask me, "Is yoga enough of a work out for you?" When I replied "yes", that seemed to only confirm their suspicions that I've dropped 10 fold in my fitness level. It seems like they longer have common topics to chat with me. I've "gone to the dark side". To make me feel better, when I meet up with some of these friends, they would tell me, "Hey, I did some yoga this morning. It felt great!" Or, "I try to do some yoga after my gym workouts now; I can see it's good for me."

What the heck am I supposed to answer? Yes people - stretching is good for you - especially in the morning and after exercising. But just because you did a few stretches that somewhat resembled some sort of yoga poses (and I bet you probably held them for less than 5 breaths.. did you even breath while you stretched?) does not mean you were "doing yoga". Even if that's about as much "yoga" as you're ever planning to do, fine. But please don't assume that simple stretching is all I do in my yoga practice.

There was a guy who told me he would like to try a yoga class with me but he's afraid he would get bored. Hmm.. I've never heard of anyone who died of boredom from ONE yoga class. When I asked him why he would feel bored (if he thinks the poses would be too easy - if he has zero attention span and canNOT manage to focus on his breath), there was no clarification. Fine, I won't force anyone to endure the hardship of boredom if one feels so strongly about it.

Then there are those who tell me yoga is boring stretching that does not even count as a warm up, but, hey, they've heard of HOT yoga - now THAT's something challenging! Yes yes, hot yoga is great for type A sporty people who are scared of stretchy peace-talking chanting meditation yoga. Why don't you actually try one class out? I'll even suck it up and go to a Bikrams class with you! And no, hot yoga is not the best type of yoga for improving flexibility, because your flexibility only temporarily improves in the heat -- try Yin and Ashtanga! And you need to stick with it! ONE class will not open up your hips permanently!

Can you tell I'm frustrated today? :P  Guess I'll keep on working on my utplutih, where I noticed observable improvements in my arm strengths over the past year, versus the crap push ups I've been doing with my friends for years which got me so far but didn't help me do proper chaturangas when I first started yoga.

Inhale... breath in fresh air and happy thoughts. Exhale.... let go of anger and judgement. I feel better now, thanks for asking :)

How I started yoga

I've read so many awesome blogs about fellow yogi's personal journeys for their yoga practices recently that I've decided to start my own documentation of my obsessive compulsive love with yoga :)

My previous misconception about yoga: it's a stretching exercise + some nice looking poses that don't look all that exciting (this was before I had ever seen pictures of arm balances).  Having above-average flexibility to begin with, I didn't feel like I needed to dedicating a full hour of class on stretching and holding poses with funny animal names.  Having never attempted the poses myself, I somehow didn't think a tree pose or a triangle pose would be challenging.  The few times I tried out yoga gyms the classes were challenging but un-inspiring.  Downward dog was such an uncomfortable pose - why did they call it a resting position? Why did the teacher make us do all these vinyasas that felt like an inefficient way to do push ups?  I was not in shape back then and probably shouldn't have gone to a power yoga class as a first attempt for yoga.  However, my second attempt was not a better experience: the teacher (a skinny middle-aged dude), who probably studied yoga in India, spent the whole class showing off how flexible he was at the front stage with advanced twisting, folding, and binding poses, then told us to try and copy what he did (which we obviously couldn't without any previous training or instructions). If this happened today, I probably would have walked up to him at the end of class and told him that he was unqualified for this job and should consider taking up yoga teacher training, and then filed a complaint to the gym manager, but I was pretty clueless at the time and walked out of class confused, with a decision to never get into yoga again.

Fast forward to about 5 years later, when I noticed 3 of my friends from different social circles had decided to sign up for yoga teacher training.  It's one thing to take up cardio kickboxing, zumba class, acro yoga or whatever, but I don't know too many people who would quit their day jobs to become  fitness trainers.  I became suspicious that there might be more to yoga than I previously thought.  Finally, at the beginning of 2010, with my neighborhood yoga studio offering a 2-week unlimited pass for $30, I decided to dive in and investigate why this activity of contortion and holding funny poses with animal names is converting my friends into yoga fanatics.

Word of advice: if a yoga studio offers multiple styles of yoga, it's probably best not to take a Hot yoga class as your first trial class;  a hatha or yin yoga class would be a much better option.  However, this warning might only apply to me, as I'm the only person I know who ran out of the hot yoga classroom  10 minutes into class, crouching on the ground and panting in shock.  I considered myself pretty fit by this time, doing lots of hiking, martial arts where my instructor ran the class like we were in the military, snowboarding etc.  I had trouble breathing properly in class (granted I was still getting over a cold and had a bit of a stuffy nose); every pose, while they looked simple, felt unbearably challenging:

Half moon pose - I never knew I would have trouble holding my body weight if I tilted slightly to the side.
Back bend - I totally crunched my lower back since I didn't know any better.
Chair pose - compared to horse stances they make us do at the dojang (martial arts classroom in Korean), in a hot room my legs shook like they were going to disintegrate and melt into pure liquid.
Tree pose - as someone who had spent the last 5 years doing kicking exercises three times a week, I was appalled that standing on one leg and trying not to move for 1 minute would make me want to drop to my knees and cry "I give up".

And you're supposed to breath smoothly through all this? What? I think that was when I ran out of the room.

So yeah, that's how I started yoga.

Where's the falling in love part? I guess I'll have to cover that in a later post.