Day 16: Over and Over Again

Monday was a good day, really, nothing riveting yet nothing to complain about. The staff are starting to teach our classes, which is kinda interesting and cool. Rowena, from Australia, who is one of the senior staff, taught this morning. It was a high-energy, athletic class and once I woke up, it was great. In the afternoon, Leigh, who is a nurse here to help Dr. T with anatomy, taught and she was fantastic too. No complaints - we really are lucky to have such excellent, experienced teachers.

After lunch, it was time for our first of two anatomy tests. There were 50 mostly-multiple-choice and a few short answer questions. I missed one, which turned out to irritate me. I've always preferred to miss by a mile than by an inch, but alas, I was super happy considering I studied a reasonable amount, and didn't let it stress me out at all. Some people were really freaking over it, but judging from Dr. T's demeanor, I didn't expect it to be hard - though I felt for some of the ESL (English as a second language) folks in that the specific wording of some questions did require attention/have nuances that you could've missed. We went on to the respiratory system....one more week of anatomy and then we're done with that.

We continued in the afternoon and then evening session with Craig's Half Moon posture clinic. It's interesting to see his feedback for people as he's very insightful and clearly has done this once or twice before :) As a teacher for 10 years, he can really nail someone's challenges. The thing is, you have to know the dialogue to really be able to get any benefit, and while that sounds easy, the dialogue is now on deck to wreak havoc with our minds, bodies, sleep schedule and psyche overall.

Craig said, "Those of you who knew it when you got here will simply put, get more sleep." We really have no time to study, save for maybe 1 hour in the morning, at lunch and dinner time (we get 2 hours at our breaks, but you have to shower, eat, and prep for the next session, so really, it's more like 1 hour of "free time"). Each posture really requires some serious time input, and soon (and by "soon" I mean tomorrow), we'll be banging out a posture a day. People were like, "So what do I have to do, not sleep???" Um, yeah, that really seems to be about the only option, and they told us this all along, but now that we're at that point, I expect a lot of less-friendly-more-cranky yogis to emerge 'round these parts. (Yours truly as one of them...). Everyone is complaining, but we knew it was coming, and it's a few weeks of our lives, so my goal is to just buck up and be really flippin' tired.

We met a bunch of visiting teachers here to proctor posture clinics. They all have a wealth of experience and many own studios, so it will be cool to get their input.

The highlight of the day for me was Craig's lecture on Half Moon Pose. He talked about the mechanics of it, as well as how it impacts the body both physically and mentally. It was meaty and felt like "yeah! yeah! this is what I want, this is what I came for!!!" He has a lecture/seminar circuit that he does, and so he talks are well organized and insightful since he's done them before many times. The last two days of training, Bikram apparently goes through each posture in order and talks about the mechanics, benefits, red flags, etc. but it's nice to get it so organized and succinct from Craig as groundwork for later.

Thanks again for all your readership, comments (both here and in person), and support. Everyone keeps warning us that "now it really gets tough" or "it's going to get a lot worse - starting now" which doesn't feel so great, but really, they haven't lied to us yet so rather than react to it negatively, I'm instead just bracing myself for impact. Having good vibes sent my way truly help to hold me up! :)

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Today's Pix:

Classes #22 & #23! Posture clinic above, and Craig instructing us.