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.