Week Three

Our third week began with a class lead by Emmy Cleaves - Bikram's most senior and knowledgeable instructor who was with us for the entire week. What an amazing woman. Allegedly in her eighties, of Latvian heritage, she could easily pass for someone twenty years her junior. She has a sharp eye and is a stickler for precision and intention of purpose with every posture. She's amazingly flexible herself and lives by the motto "Motion is Lotion" - I love that!

The third week also saw the start of our anatomy classes with Dr Frank Tripani, who originally hails from New York and is the author of "Our Food Dilemma". Its been a interesting series of lectures and we'll have our first exam on monday, so yet more study this weekend! He has some strong opinions and warnings about the beef and poultry industry and genuinely cares about what we should and should not be eating. Heart health is also high on his agenda and he is a big proponent of including cold water Omega-3 fish oils in the diet.

Posture clinics began this week. Everyone has to deliver the dialogue for each pose, one at a time, in front of a group of about 35 with three 'demonstrators'. Its pretty nerve wracking and some of the postures are tricky to remember and deliver in a timely fashion. I'm afraid I kept my 'demonstrators' in a back bend far longer that they were happy with! I'm hoping this gets easier with practise - there is alot of dialogue to remember and not much time in the day to study it. This week our days have run from 7am to about 11pm - it will get more intense from next week as Bikram is back from his trip to Tokyo, so I'm sure we'll look at this week in retrospect as a 'soft' one! The yoga classes themselves have been great. I've adjusted well to the heat and so far I've had no real complaints from my body, other than a couple of tweaks in the knees later in the week, so I've backed off on toe stand for a bit. I was really worried about doing 2 classes a day, 11 in one week, but its not really been an issue. On the days when I felt fatigued and just not digging the idea of the second evening class, it turned out that the yoga was really what I needed. A testament that this practise really does energize you when you least feel like doing it! 

The weekends, after our saturday am class are so precious. There are of course essential errands to do like the laundry and food shopping and catching up with the outside world. Our trips to Whole Foods, Target and any other stores are becoming highlights! I've been lucky to hook up with some girls to do this with every weekend. Jacqueline, bless her, organizes the rental car and directions and I'm so grateful for that. This is not the easiest of cities to navigate and Vegas drivers have a certain 'style' on the road! Our hotel rooms are equipped with only one small fridge and no kitchen facilities. This makes fresh food storage a challenge and I constantly feel that I'm 'camping' in the room. Why we were not arranged to stay in a facility with a small kitchenette and a full size fridge is beyond me. The hotel food is pretty mediocre. I braved the breakfast buffet once - its a frightening display of large scale, institutional fodder patronized by an equally frightening range of clientele, some of whom are still hungover from a night of drinking and gambling! However, if one picks and chooses very carefully and goes early enough to avoid the hideous lineups, its not so bad. I'm not rushing to get back there any time soon though. I really miss my sunday mornings at home with eggs, decent coffee, croissant and The New York Times. Sigh.... Week 4, here we come!