Bikram, Day 27
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” — Joni Mitchell
Today was an interesting day, in so much as I got to measure how well I have been doing at yoga. I accomplished this by not doing as well today.
Yoga is all about concentration and today, i didn’t have any. Well, I haven’t had any for two days, but I got the call after yesterday’s class, so this was the first class after the call.
This blog is all about me, and rarely about other people in my life. So, suffice it to say my father had a car accident, had been drinking, thankfully injured no one else in the process, but is going to be in the hospital for a while as a result. After that? Still unclear.
So, it’s been a lot of phone calls. Mother, brother, sister, aunt, in a game of telephone involving little bits of the puzzle as we learn them. As it is really a miracle he’s alive, it brings up a lot of issues, about relationships, family, etc.
In any event, with all of this buzzing in my head, it was hard to stay in postures. For example, usually checking out a hot guy nearby is enough for me to fall out of a posture (and needless really, as nearly everyone in the class is naked afterward anyway). So, having all of this family stuff buzzing in my head made it more difficult. But my frustration with the difficulty sort of gave me insight into my progress. I was able to know what I wasn’t able to do as well, whereby I typically focus on how well I am able to do a posture that day.
Unlike the gym, where there is clear incremental progress (you used to bench 20, and now you bench 35), yoga is the same class every time. Your body is the strength, the balance, the breath and the resistance. So, usually it is just a sense of how well can I do this today, with no regard for how you did it yesterday. And that’s sort of its charm, since it is all about living in the present.
It was curious to watch mental disruption at a high level wreak havoc like that. But i did every posture. When i fell out, i got back in. i didn’t leave early or make excuses. So, it was everything it should be.
Here is me, today.
