Bendy You

Imagine that you have to go to the hospital for a procedure.  You get there and the nurse asks you to change into a hospital gown and to lie on the bed.  “Oh, and here is a blanket”, she says.  Shortly thereafter, you realize how incredibly cold this place is.  As you see nurses walk by, you notice they all have on polar fleece jackets.  Yet, you are left here alone with nothing but a hospital gown, socks, if you are lucky, and the thinnest blanket you’ve ever seen.

With teeth chattering, you’ve decided you have waited long enough to buzz the nurse.  You don’t want to seem like a complainer, after all.  But you realize your fleece-clad nurse knows you must be freezing because you have on that stupid gown and because the thermostat is set to 55 degrees.  So, she knows you must be cold.  Yet, she has left you lying there with nothing but a paper gown and a thin, wretched, useless little blanket. You finally buzz her and tell her how cold you are.

Then something wonderful happens. She comes in with something so heavenly, so magical, so comforting, that it makes all your worries disappear, even worries about your upcoming procedure.  She brings you a warm blanket fresh out of the blanket warmer.

OK, maybe this is a little extreme, but it comes close to what I feel sometimes as I lie on my mat prior to Bikram yoga class and I sense the warmth of the room descending upon me.  Some days, the heat is really welcome and comforting like the warm hospital blanket.

Sometimes the heat helps erase the anxieties I walked in the door with.  It is a friend, and as I’ve said before, it can even be like a hug when you really need one.  I wish it were always this way, but it is not.  Today, however, with a day that finally feels like winter, a day when I can’t seem to get warm, the heat was a friend.

Maybe someday I won’t need it but right now, that occasional sip of cool water during Bikram Yoga makes class bearable.

I am going to tell you about my Yoga Water Journey.  Don’t laugh, OK?  It has taken me a year to figure this out….

I started out with a regular re-useable plastic water bottle, one that fits in the water bottle holder on my bike.  This yielded warm, plastic-y tasting water during class.

Then I moved up to an insulated plastic water bottle.  It kept the water cool but the water had an off-taste, probably from the plastic, probably from the plates from last night’s dinner that the bottle sat next to in the dishwasher.  I decided that I wanted to get away from having the water contained in a plastic vessel in the hot room.

So then I went to a glass water bottle. Seemed like a great idea.  Until I dropped it on the pavement two weeks later.  The glass didn’t break but the plastic top did, rendering it useless.

Finally, I decided a stainless steel water bottle was what I needed.  My husband asked that I make myself a Christmas list so I put “stainless steel water bottle” on it.

Christmas morning came and I opened this:

Yes, I know it is a Starbucks coffee cup and not a water bottle.  At first, it even smelled a bit like coffee, which was kind of cool. But, the truth is that it has worked perfectly for water during Bikram yoga:

• It is double-insulated so keeps the water cool.
• The bottle doesn’t sweat (unlike just about everything/everyone else in the room).
• The top easily flips up when I’m ready to drink.  No twisting required.
• It isn’t fragile.
• It doesn’t leak when I knock it over during class.

The only downside is that it is a bit heavy. I fear I will drop it on my flip-flop clad feet someday on my way into the studio.  But it hasn’t happened yet.

I had a little freak-out one day when I left it at the studio after class. I even called the studio to make sure it was there.  Misty assured me it was and said in a nice way that nobody would want to steal my cup.  (She didn’t actually say that but I’ll bet she was thinking that.)

It is the best cup, though.  I’m telling you.  Maybe I should get out the Sharpie and scribble my name on it.  Right now.   Just.  In.  Case.

I haven’t been posting as often as I thought I would.  The truth is I’ve been grumpy and tired.  I am normally an optimistic, happy person.  Posting while I’m grumpy and tired doesn’t seem that authentic to me, I guess.  But, maybe during this challenge, Grumpy and Tired are the New Me.

Gosh, I hope not…. And I’m sure my kids and husband hope not, too.

I keep asking myself why I am doing this challenge.  It is very difficult to fit into my schedule, especially considering that the night classes lead to no sleep for me.  Getting the classes in is stressing me out.  Yoga is not supposed to stress you out, right?

The good news is, despite the fact that I’ve missed 3 days this week, I am still on target.  24 classes in 4 weeks.  That’s 6 classes a week with one day off.  I’ve had to do a couple of doubles to get here and I’m sure I’ll have to do more doubles later.

But, as they teach us in yoga, now is all that matters.  Not the next posture.  Not the previous posture.  Just now.

And NOW on this lovely Friday morning, things are starting to look up.

Hi, folks!  I wrote this last week but forgot to publish it.  Ahhhh!  Enjoy!

Let me catch you up on the week.  I am at around day 15 of my 60-day yoga challenge (though I have 70 days to do 60 classes).  Monday, I went to the 4:30pm class and had a really hard time sleeping.

Tuesday, I squeezed in a class at 9:30am and proceeded with my very busy day.  You see, I am a small business owner, a photographer.  I do family, children, and high school senior portraits, and started a yoga portrait photography business, too, last spring.

January is usually slow, which is why I chose to start the challenge in January, but this January, I’m crazy busy figuring out my senior portrait business.  Plus, there are church activities and kid and family activities, including a Tuesday night meeting once in a while.

But I digress….

Having had little sleep Monday night, I was dog tired Tuesday night.  I went to bed on time after my church meeting.  And then at 3:30am, something strange happened.  Something that never happens.  We had a power outage for a few minutes. The chirping smoke alarms woke me up.  I set my cell phone alarm and tried to go back to sleep.  But when I get startled awake, I have a very hard time going back to sleep, which is exactly what happened.  What the heck?  Is Someone trying to tell me something?

I woke up Wednesday tired and grouchy.  Wednesday was one of my days off this week because, oh, yeah, I’m also in Toastmasters.  Because I can’t sleep after evening classes and because of Toastmasters, there is no other available time for me to practice yoga on Wednesday’s. And Wednesday night, I’m supposed to have handbell practice at church.  All day on the verge of crying, I chose to not go to handbell practice and stay home.

But I felt guilty.  Still do.

And I’m very behind on my work, on top of everything else. Imagine the sinking feeling I had at 8:30pm last night, when I realized I had not paid my sales tax for the last quarter of the year.  The sales tax is due on January 20.  But before I can do the sales tax, I have to balance my checkbook.  So that is what I did right before I went to bed last night.  Done.

As I read back over this while I’m writing, it sounds like whining.  I guess it is.  I’m making excuses for why I deserve to quit. I’ve written it out there for all the world to see. And if people voted, they’d vote to quit the challenge and get my life in order.  That’s what they would do, right?

Are my priorities all wrong?  Is it OK to have messed up priorities for 70 days so that I can do a challenge that I really want to do?  Or are my priorities really messed up at all?

I want to look at it another way, though.  Reframe. I am in Toastmasters and handbells because I really enjoy them.   So quitting those would only hurt myself.

Lifelong learning is something I firmly believe in, something I model to my children, something that makes life worth living. So looking at this whole challenge thing another way, I am showing my children how to set a goal and to persevere, even when you don’t feel like it.  Even when your own very enjoyable interests manage to get in the way.  Even when all you want to do is crawl into bed and do nothing for a couple of days.

So tonight, I will tell them about how hard this is all becoming.  I’m going to tell them that I’m dedicating my challenge to them.  With that, how can I fail?