Day 82 Seriously. Turn Down the HEAT.
This is the third day in a row that I’ve skipped the last few postures. Is the thermostat broken, people? I’m not a rank beginner, but I’ve been feeling a little wibbly around the edges in the hot room. Nauseated. Black spots floating in my peripheral vision.
Beginners have been fleeing like lemmings, soggy, desperate rodents repenting their mad scramble onto the Bikram bandwagon. Honestly, right now I’m afraid to invite anyone to try it. It’s not fun. It’s scary.
“Have you been feeling it too?” asked Sharon, pounding down a bit more water before class started this morning. “I thought it was just me.”
“It’s not just you,” I assured her. “It’s been way hotter than usual.”
We chatted a bit about why we put ourselves through this, and naturally, the subject of hot flashes came up.
“Do you have menopause?” Jaspreet asked me. As if it was a disease.
I nodded glumly.
She’s one of those slightly… off… people. Friendly, but not quite right. (The kind my daughter says are drawn to me. I’m beginning to believe her.) Every time I’ve been the 9:15 am class, Jaspreet’s been there, in the far corner, same exact spot on the floor. She’s not athletic-looking and spends a lot of time looking out the window instead of doing the postures. The instructors sort of ignore her. I think they’ve given up.
“Oh!” Jaspreet looked as if a lightbulb went on inside her head. Which I imagine is a novel experience for her. “That’s why it looks like there’s water on you sometimes.”
Mercifully, the conversation ended there, as our torture session began again.
Yup, that’s me, I thought, as my pores started gushing.
The sweaty one.
Day 80 110 Percent?
Uh, not when the thermometer says 110 degrees.
I’ve had some pretty strong days lately, I’m happy to say. I’ve given it my best effort and am making progress. Can straighten both legs (momentarily at least) in Standing-Head-to-Knee. The clicks and pops in my hips now occur at a much deeper stretch. My backward bends are getting much deeper – without pain. (“You want that stretching-pain sensation,” they say. “Back’s gonna hurt like hell,” they say. Well, unless I’m having a baby, I do not push through pain, I don’t care how long you studied in India.)
But today I was dripping before the class even started. Hot flash? I wondered. Malaria? Denge Fever? I simply cannot be this hot already.
Since hot flashes are pretty much a given these days, I lay back in Savasana, closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. Drops of sweat trickled down my temples and into my ears. My limbs were slick and shiny, my clothes sticky, my towel damp.
All this, I’d like to emphasize, before the class even began!
I managed the standing series, but then when we hit the floor, I just sort of … stopped. I haven’t done that since the early days of my practice but I’m trying to be yogi-ish, so I allowed myself to do what my body instructed, and just observed the sensations.
Here are my observations:
The air entering my lungs felt thick, as if there wasn’t enough oxygen. The floor felt hot. The walls felt hot, shrinking around me. (Oh dear, that sounds like claustrophobia.) I could smell the breath of the woman behind me. (It reminded me of my long-dead grandmother and hers was not a generation that valued oral hygiene.) I could feel the thud-thud-thud of my pulse in my ears, matching the steady drip-drip-drip of sweat from my now wringing-wet top onto the towel. My mat squished like a sponge when I moved, so I stopped moving.
At some point I stopped observing and simply waited for it to end. I skipped the deepest backward bend and deepest forward bend. Camel makes me feel panicky at the best of times, and Rabbit, well, I could see choking on my own stench, then drowning in the sweat dripping up my nose, too tired to figure out how to get out of the posture.
A couple of people left the room today, which hasn’t happened in quite awhile, too. At least it wasn’t just me.
When I saw the temperature, when we were finally done, it all made sense.
“It’s not really 110 degrees,” Angela said, smiling indulgently at me. She hadn’t even broken a gentle glow. Usually the teachers are at least a bit red-faced by the end. She looked fresh and dewy as a daisy.
“Okay then, 120.” If she wasn’t so sweet, I’d have decked her. “Whatever, it was freakin’ hot.”
Someone setting up for the next class overheard me.
“Yeah,” he added with a worried frown, “it feels a little … soupy… in there.”
The only thing worse than doing yoga in 110 degree heat?
Being in the class right after.
Day 59 Why, Why, Why?
It’s one of the first questions a writer learns to ask, so I guess I came to this occupation honestly. I’m obsessed with understanding the “why?” behind stuff. Like rules, for instance. (Which made me a poor fit in my fundamentalist, conservative, evangelical family. I’ve no problem with God, never have had, but “the Bible says…” was never a good enough answer for me. It is, however, the kind of answer that pretty effectively shuts down further questioning.)
Or human behaviour, which is all about “why,” it seems to me. My kids, from infancy on, were so darn interesting. There was always so much going on inside them. I had a problem with the old school method of child-rearing that said badly-behaving children need to be smacked into line, so I always tried to look for reasons. I figured that children, like puppies, want to please the people who care for them. And that when their needs are met, they’re for the most part, pleasant small animals to be around.
But small animals have a lot of needs. Bored, lonely puppies eat furniture. Does that make them “bad?” No. It means that their owners didn’t provide them with sufficient stimulation, exercise, training, etc. Children usually don’t eat furniture, probably because most of them aren’t given the chance, but they can sure exhibit a lot of other unpleasant and destructive behaviours. And it still comes down to unmet needs.
One of my daughters, when she got hungry, was prone to blistering tantrums, that frightened her as much as they did me. Was she “bad?” No, of course not. She was hungry. And that made her scared, and angry. (In the Urban Dictionary vernacular, “hangry.”) We all know how that feels.
Yesterday, in an unexpected turn of events, I barely made it through my yoga class. I had to skip the second rep of most postures and by the end, I was just lying there, gasping, trying not to bolt for the door. Why? As I staggered out I looked at the thermometer and there was my answer: 110 degrees. I’m sorry, you Bikram nuts, but that’s just not right.
Today, despite feeling under the weather, and being a little gun-shy after yesterday, my practice was strong again. Temp: 107. There you go.
Most of the time, things aren’t so cut and dried. Usually, we’ re only vaguely aware of the reasons behind our actions, if we’re aware at all. I doubt very much that individuals get up in the morning, pour themselves a bowl of Cheerios and think, “Today I’m going to be an asshole!” But something happens to make us feel threatened or unappreciated or worthless or impotent or (fill in the blank) and we lash out, or we withdraw, or do whatever we can to build ourselves up, or to dull the pain.
I can’t remember why I started this post, probably because I’m labouring under the fuzzy weight of a persistent headache. (Denge fever? Brain tumour? Lyme Disease?!?) To outsiders – and here I mean men mostly – I probably appear to be one or more of the following: bitchy, grumpy, grouchy, selfish, mad, nursing a grudge, preoccupied, tired, in a “mood,” miserable, someone to avoid, etc.
In fact, I’m not really any of those things. In classic break-up language, “It’s not you, it’s me.” And I have a headache.
I might avoid people because I know I appear to be those other things, plus, I really don’t have the wherewithal to be chipper when I’m trying to avoid loud noises and sudden movements. But it really has nothing to do with anyone else. It’s about my pain. Today, it’s my “why.”
Is this clear? It’s nothing personal. I’ll take a little sympathy, even some TLC if it’s available, but if that’s too much, then please just leave me alone. I’m not having a headache at you.