Day 11: Lock the Knee!

How about that tree pose??? <------- Another day, another two Bikram classes! Today was actually just fine. The yoga classes are starting to kinda blur together now - honestly, I can't keep them separate, but that's good news. It implies none are proving terribly memorable. :) Emmy taught again this morning and is definitely getting tougher; Bikram taught at 5 and I had an oddly focused practice and even banged out a few postures that I have seen before! Yay! Lecture was about muscles and then about nutrition in relation to cancer, by Dr. T. Then Emmy spoke again about muscular dysfunction today; she went from head to toe and just discussed issues and how yoga helps them. She talked about the importance of meditation - conceding that Bikram isn't exactly "into it" - and ended both yesterday and today with some "om"ing. Bikram spoke again tonight, continuing through the different aspects of yoga, telling stories to illustrate them. I really enjoyed it and feel like it really does all tie up nicely when you think about the connection of how you live your life, and how you do your yoga. Or, maybe moreso - how you want to live and how you want to do yoga. He talked about how mantras are the medium for spiritualism, and how his mantra is "Lock the knee! Kick out the leg!" (Bikram yogis are chuckling here, or just looking dejected, like me...) - it was joking in tone and pretty funny to all of us. He went on to say the dialogue is his mantra, and how he created a path and all we need to do is follow that path!

Well, I'm heartily on it.

In this morning's class, I really tried hard to concentrate. I made it through the whole standing series with relative good (that is to say, more normal for me) focus; and then lost it completely in the floor series and was just all over the map. During afternoon class, I was distracted a bit and honestly, I think it made me focus more! Emmy talked yesterday about when we have pain, often (to a degree) it's in our minds - if we start a task or someone comes to visit, we may notice we're no longer in pain! That is to say, it's in our minds - well, being distracted in class led to me not noticing the pain as much. I'm not saying this was a "win" but rather, an unexpected experiment. If I were to be appropriately "distracted" with proper focus and concentration, perhaps I wouldn't notice the burning in my right gluteus and quad (oh, man, do they hurt!), etc. We'll see. Buddy Luke practices right in front of me,to my left - he was sweet and said I don't appear to be unfocused and all over the map ("Jenn, you have a solid practice. You are strong! If you didn't, I'd be distracted by you and I'm totally not.") Nice validation, really. Still, compared to how I feel at home (a sentence we've all now spoken 1000 times), it is just so different here....
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Pics: Me, Class #15; Dr. T with his list of cancer do's and don't's when it comes to food; Emmy and a student (locking the knee...of course); Me - class #16 - I fold up small, it's probably something to do with the heat! :)