Today was my first Bikram class in well over a week, due to being in Boston last week. I attended the morning class with all my yoga buddies. A favorite of mine was teaching and the room was perfect. Perfect teacher, perfect room, perfect that my friends were all around me – the only thing not perfect was that I had been gone a long time and I feared this wasn’t going to go well. I know, I know – no expectations. But 11 days without Bikram? Ouch. There has to be some consequence. Type A that I am, I immediately told my friend my strategy. Take it easy and slow and sit down if I need to. I hate sitting down and will avoid it until I collapse.
After the first set of standing bow, I sat down for the second set. I could’ve done the set, but decided to take the knee. Something the teacher said before class rang in my brain. She said don’t feel bad or like you should’ve pushed through if you take the knee. She said if you take it, sit there and enjoy it. So I did. It was here I had another ah-ha yoga moment.
Before taking that knee, I usually wait until the black and green pixels are dancing in front of my eyes and I literally fall to my knees. Trying to get back up is almost impossible and I’m usually down for two sets, because I waited too long to take the knee and now I can’t dial it back and stand up without the dizziness again. Just like a headache or a cold. If I don’t take the medicine at the first inkling of getting them, they become full blown and no amount of medicine will shut them down.
Today was decidedly different. Before class we were discussing something else and my friend was talking about “how it’s a choice”. Taking a knee for me today was a choice, not a result of me pushing to the max and having no control over taking the knee and succumbing. I could’ve done that second set of standing bow. I was tempted to because I love standing bow, but somehow I knew pushing to that point would sabotage the rest of my class, so I made a choice, took the knee, heeded the teacher’s advice and enjoyed the knee. My dialogue in my head was going something like this:
“Look at me sitting here enjoying this break. There aren’t even any green pixels in front of me. In fact, I’m quite comfortable. I’m not even concerned with what the teacher or my friends might think of me sitting here. I’m doing it totally for my own benefit so I can have a productive class. I chose to sit. I didn’t collapse and die into it. I’m on my own little mat island, actually enjoying it instead of trying to make the pixels go away.”
I never had that experience with sitting down before. I got up and did both sets of balancing stick, both sets of triangle and CHOSE to sit out of the first set of standing head to knee. I could’ve done it until I fell, but once again I sat proudly on my little mat island and enjoyed my break. As a result of taking control of the practice instead of letting it control me, the rest of the class was absolutely wonderful. From past experience with sitting (I should say “falling”) down, my floor practice would have been a lot of crawling around on my mat if I had pushed myself to that point. I turned what had the potential for a bad class into a good one.
Today I learned that in yoga, sports, or exercising, it does no good for me to disregard what my body is telling me and push on through. Yesterday in Koko I did the same thing. I knew pressing fifty pounds was too much for me, and as much as I hate dialing the weight back when the machine suggests fifty pounds, I knew, for the betterment of the whole workout, I should. I did it. I CHOSE to do it. I didn’t wait until it hurt to lift too much weight.
And so, as another day goes by, I agree with my friend – life is about choices, we ARE free to make them, making wise ones truly pays off, and …I have written.
[…] used it in Tuesdays blog, Sitting Down In Bikram, and a friend had commented that this was “fridge worthy”. I laughed, but then I […]