It's never too late to start from scratch again

Advanced seminar. This week was the advanced seminar so the hot room was full with almost 700 people practising. Well the morning classes were, the evening was quite full as well but not nearly to capacity.

As for the yoga I’m starting to feel stronger in my practise. My target for the week was to not sit out a set of anything and I got through it. Even though Fridays morning class was a close call. English bull dog determination to the rescue, because my Bengal tiger strength was gone by triangle.

Other than the yoga this week was crammed full with posture clinics. Two each day, every day. Followed by Bikram lectures at night. We are so close to wrapping up the dialogue I can taste it. It’s almost the only thing on my brain right now, ‘please let us finish dialogue so we can have soooome free time’.

I finished the weekend with three concerts. An impromptu concert at the mall next to the hotel by Natasha Beddingfield. Then in the evening I went to see Macy Gray & John Legend at the San Diego Padres baseball stadium. It was so nice to be back in the real world outside the yoga bubble. Even if it was only for an evening.

Week six also known as Fascia week.
We started of the week with a great talk by Jon Burras on the subject of Fascia and it’s role in the body. Nicely tied in to how this relates to yoga. His second day talk about emotional anatomy was maybe less relevant. But still interesting if only to see just how strongly people were reacting to some of the things he says.

All in all week six was the toughest week so far, and very emotional. I found myself getting angry at the smallest things. That is so out of my character it’s not even fun. But I got through it and we are entering the home stretch.

The week was also the recertification week for teachers so we had about 200 guest teachers show up. Busy hot room for sure.

The week ended with an awesome Halloween class, taken in fancy dress, and a pizza party organised by Rajashree. Rajashree & Bikram came down and partied with us for a while. People were in a good mood and all seemed good.

Week five, or let’s turn it up a bit week. Boss was back, and in form with late nights of bollywood movies and intense classes. This week was by far the toughest week yet. But it also brought the halfway point. Both in terms time and in terms of dialogue with triangle finished.

We had the guest teachers start showing up in numbers. I’ve got loads of teachers from home showing up the next few weeks. It’s been a bit of a party. But it’s strange seeing people you know that’s not tied up in the bubble we are living in right now. I suspect it’s going to be really strange to leave here. Might need a few days to decompress and let life seep back in.

This week we also had the pleasure of having the somewhat eccentric Dr. Das. We had him for 8 hours, and I couldn’t tell you a single thing he tried to tell us. All I’ve got written down as notes is “Dr. Das made a funny!”. This was in relation to the fact that he made one joke through those 8 hours, and he looked so surprised when he did. Like did I just say that. Unfortunately I can’t remember the joke.

We all miss Dr. P and his amazing sense of humour. “The longest bone in the human body is The FEMUR!”. Speaking of Dr. P I passed my anatomy exam with flying colours.

Until next week.

It’s been a great week, Bikram was away for a second week so we got some much appreciated sleep. It was also the second week of anatomy with Dr. P. For those who haven’t had a chance to meet him, he is hilarious. He keeps interjecting his classes with jokes and stories from the ER. One of my favourite (sorry it’s kind of a Dr. P internal joke) was the following:

“There is no gravity, the earth just sucks.” – Dr. P

I realised on Wednesday that we’ve undertaken is so much more than I at least suspected. Mentally it was all about I’ll go there and learn how to teach a sequence of exercise. Boy was I wrong. What I’ve undertaken is a responsibility to try to save the lives of all my friends, present & future. Physically, mentally, spiritually, internally. That is one scary burden. The old adage, ” the more I learn, the less I know” comes to mind. Maybe that is why Bikram is fond of saying, “The only thing I know is to lock the knee”.

This week I’ve also rediscovered my love for this yoga. That’s why I’m here, but it all got lost somewhere along the way. Amidst all the stress, pain, joy and memory loss. We’ll see how long the feeling lasts now that Bikram is back full time. Starting next week the real pain will come. Though classes, stress of posture clinic and sleep deprivation. The honey moon is over baby.

If you’ve ever taken even just one bikram class then you know something about endurance, pain, compassion, compromise, community and self reliance. In other words, you have started to see yourself.

This last week I think we all started to see ourselves, and that is way to private a subject, so no real post this week. Until next week have fun.

So the second week is all done and dusted. It was packed full with emotions. From the heatwave, bringing with it a very hot humid tent that gave me an asthma attack and my first ever leaving the room. That started as fear but quickly brought a tremendous amount of disappointment. Through the panic at the speed of going through dialogue in posture clinics. The feeling of loss that came from realising how quickly we got to the end of the second week.

Sounds very negative, but the prevailing feeling was actually one of sheer joy of being here at this point in time.

We’ve had our fair share of classes, lectures, posture clinics and bollywood movies. And we had Emmy here for almost the entire week. She is such a remarkable woman, words just don’t do her justice.

I had my first moments of thinking of myself as teaching in Bikram’s lecture on Friday. Once that started now it’s creeping in everywhere. I can actually see myself teaching classes now. And today for the first time I really felt like I will know the dialogue when I leave. Sure loads more work is needed on it, but that’s what the next 7 weeks are for.

For the next 2 weeks Boss is gone, so no overly late nights. I can’t begin to describe my joy at that. Sure we’ll miss him, but not the late nights.

So the first week is over and done with. Time has been flying by like crazy. If the rest of the training goes like this we’ll be done in what feels like four days, not nine weeks.

I’ve been following advice and taking it easy in classes, but I think come Monday I need to ramp it up a bit. So far I’ve been screamed at twice (first part awkward, eagle) and praised twice (second part awkward, standing separate leg stretching pose) by boss. All in all a decent performance I’d say.

Everybody here has been so nice so far, it’s unbelievable. Hotel staff, TT staff, fellow students, even the dentist. That’s right the dentist, I had to go yesterday. I managed to chip off a large chunk of a back tooth Friday night. It made Saturdays class one of the sloppiest classes I’ve done in ages. But it’s all good and sorted now. It also made the class very weak, because I chipped the tooth just before dinner so I could hardly eat anything. Trust me food is a major thing here, even a minor slip up with food has major consequences.

My first piece of dialogue has been delivered. Getting up with a mic in front of 400 people to give a presentation that has to be verbatim is more than a little nerve wrecking. But even worse for me was demonstrating the posture in front of the same group of people. I’ve now got a Bikram nickname, apparently I remind him of John Lennon. I’m think that can’t be all that bad a thing.

Short post this week, I’m still trying to get back in the habit of writing blog posts. Until next week…

It’s about 20 hours left until the fall 2010 Bikram Teacher training begins. So far I’m surprisingly relaxed, maybe it’s because I spent the last two days going on rollercoasters. There’s not to much else to report at this point. The bags are pack, the flight and bus to/from airport is booked. I’m miles behind where I wanted to be on the dialogue, but that will sort itself out I’m sure. Tomorrow the madness begins.

For now you are welcome to have a look at my old blog, Bikram 101.

Until next week folks.