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 81 Thanks, Mom
A couple of years ago, in a moment of complete and utter self-delusion, I bought my parents a gift pass at a local Iyengar yoga studio. Now, Iyengar yoga is not like Bikram, lest you think it was an assassination attempt. Iyengar’s all about recovery, regaining normal function, and uses a lot of props. Belts, blocks, bolsters, blankets, folding chairs, anything to help you get into the posture safely, without hurting yourself.
My parents are at the age where mobility is getting to be an issue, and the instructor promised me it would be a beginner-and-senior-friendly class. I warned her that my parents would be… reluctant learners.
She told me she was looking forward to meeting them.
As it turns out, they went to one class, the instructor mentioned something about a Buddhist monk and that was it.
“I liked the exercise part,” Mom said. “I just ignored the rest.”
“I didn’t want to hear about some monk,” Dad said with what I thought was unnecessary malice.
They never went back. Oh well. They get points for going at all, in my book.
Actually, if I think back, I have my mother to thank for my interest in yoga. Yes, my Mennonite mother introduced me to yoga, via the television show, Kareen’s Yoga. Apparently I’m not the only one who remembers this BC celebrity. From an article by Pamela Post, in Today’s Vancouver Woman:
For a decade, from 1970 to 1980, Kareen hosted a national daytime show, Kareen’s Yoga, on CTV. She was like a lithe, spiritual Elke Sommer with her blonde hair, German accent, and awesome ability to bend into the full pantheon of yoga poses. She brought yoga, meditation, and whole food nutrition into the living rooms of ordinary Canadians. Folks with a penchant for Kraft Dinner and Hockey Night in Canada began doing headstands and eating whole grains. Depressed Canadian housewives got off their meds and started meditating.
I remember a ridiculously small black-and-white TV set with rabbit ears balanced on the top, and my mom on the floor, following along. I remember Kareen’s black cat, Mouffie, who practiced with her on the show, except that in my memory, Mouffie is a Siamese. (It was probably the cat that got my attention; I was always angling for a house-cat in those days. In my family, cats lived in the barn and ate mice, and the farmer squirted milk into their mouths directly from the teats of the cow.)
My mother, it seems to me now, must have been something of a rebel amongst her brethren and sistern. Kareen’s Yoga, after all, showed a bare-limbed woman moving her body with joy – even smiling – with no husband in sight anywhere. It certainly warranted suspicion right up there with further education, Roman Catholicism, liqueur-filled chocolates and The Naked Heathen. Plus, Kareen was meditating. That was a lot like praying. Except it wasn’t!
But what do I know? Maybe Mom only had the TV on because she was waiting for Hymn Sing or Tommy Hunter.
There’s more to most mothers than meets the eye of their offspring, though. Mom as a 1970’s-yogini? Why not? That what I choose to believe.
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.