Yoga Challenge: Day 4 Update
Status Update: 3.5 days through the challenge, 5 classes complete.
In my Day 2 Update I discussed the Warrior Academy class that I took on Saturday; Apparently I’m not a warrior! I was so exhausted after that class I was basically resigned to a chair for the rest of the day. There was very little chance of me making it to the late Saturday evening class, which I didn’t… It was at this moment that my challenge was fused with a little more reality: shooting for 2 classes per day but setting the challenge requirement to 1.
Sunday will be the day I will look back on as the hardest day of the challenge. I left the cozy confines of my bed and stumbled over to the studio just before 8am for Desi Springer’s 8am Anusara Inspired Vinyasa class. The room was once again nearly full and Desi (co-founder) began the class discussing a variety of events happening at the studio and setting the intention of focusing on Love and Heart on this pre-Valentine’s day class. The practice was quite intensive as we worked through a variety of heart-openers. Desi stopped the class at one point to point out a gentleman who was recovering from an injury and therefore just lying in the room to ‘soak up the love’. I think the word love was used about 74 times throughout the hour and a half. I was pushed to my limit at the end of the class where we tried out a few partner-assisted poses. My partner out-weighed me by about 40 pounds and 2 days later I am still feeling the results of him assisting my cobra with knees in my back. We practiced assisted hand-stands which were cool and ultimately it was a fantastic practice. My only complaint is that the wonderful heart-opening flow felt interrupted by the partner assisted gymnastics. My experience with Yoga classes is that this is a common theme – spend 45 minutes in a series, then spend 20 minutes trying out super-hard postures…. Not what I’d prefer but maybe I’m alone in this?
I spent the day doing things around the house with Autumn (We are nowhere near being settled fully), with a 4pm Vital Roots class hanging over my head like a dark cloud. At half past 3 I mustered my strength, ate a snack and skipped over to the studio singing Hindu devotional music (OK not really, it looked more like a man with a limp walking off a hang-over). As I walked into the Yoga studio and felt the 97 degree room, I suddenly wished I hadn’t downed a chai and bowl of Tabouli salad heavy on the garlic about 20 minutes earlier…. In the 10 minutes before class began, I actually managed to fall asleep on my mat, wakened by our instructor Hannah Ross Smith’s greeting. The next 90 minutes were a battle for me. I was nauseous, sore, angry and kept telling myself at some point it would shift. Hannah was a wonderful instructor, infusing the entire class with a sense of calm, peace and connection. The shift came, eventually, 85 minutes into the practice during Savasana, when I knew it was all over. Hannah closed with a beautiful devotional hymn (she has an amazing voice), and I wandered home grateful for this practice.
The rest of the evening I was pretty much just a solid mass of flesh floating between the sofa and the refrigerator.
Namaste.