Week Five

Swimming pool fingers. Yes, the heat has been cranking nicely in the hot room and the sweat has been pouring. I love it. Classes have been nicely challenging and my body and mind have been strong. I really feel like I'm managing to achieve a greater depth in many of the postures where previously I thought I may have maxed out in. My knees seem to be feeling much better too, so all seems well on that front. I've even 'unearthed' some deep seated abs so that's a nice bonus. The constant study to memorize dialogue for the daily posture clinics (we've been spending about 5 1/2 hours a day this week doing this) has really been exhausting. The clinics are run by both visiting teachers and the regular senior Bikram Yoga teachers, so there has been a lot of valuable information, feedback and guidance given about our performances and delivery style. 

The beginning of week five marked the last of our sessions with Dr T and our second anatomy exam. I passed! The tests were were very straight forward and I felt like I was in school all over again. Before the exam we had an interesting lecture with Dr Mani Bhaumik, the brilliant laser physicist who was integral in the development of Lasik eye surgery and touched on the less traveled path of attempting to explain spirituality via his scientific genius. He is author of Code Name God.

Bikram himself has been 'laying low' this week. We did not have any lectures, or movies, with him this week and I think only three evening classes. The best class with him was on friday night when he decided that we'd all been working so hard and deserved the night off - no posture clinic! What a wave of joy that went through that room! Everyone was so pumped with the prospect that we all had a very energized class! The friday evening class was followed by an equally fantastic one led by Misha Soltis, 8am saturday morning. Misha has been a key teacher here and so inspirational and encouraging in our posture clinics. This was her fist class teaching all of us together in the hot room and I hope there will be many more. Truly motivating.

Highlight of the week: Receiving a package from Nancy from New York. Bagels, a T-shirt and a really nice card. This 'yoga bubble' that we're in really makes you feel cut off from the outside world so getting a package is so great. I sometimes feel like I'm back in boarding school in England, sequestered away for weeks at a time. The only difference being that I had to make my own bed back then and I wasn't sweating quite so much! Anyway, hope all is well with you in the real world - we are just over half way through!