Day 17 - just keep swimming

After a long hot exhausting day of new student orientation (and learning of some new job duties) I was surprised that I was so excited to get to yoga. Maybe it is that I needed the 90 minutes self meditation. I had to rush after work, but made it just in time (well not in time enough to get ICE, and had to convince myself that the ice was just a tool and I'd be fine without it....eeek!) Did the 6:30pm with Roz, because I've really enjoying her teaching and I've asked her quite a bit of questions with great feedback. Candy saved me a place next to the door. Again I got to look at the hallway words "Concentration" through the door, which would prove necessary this class.

I went in feeling ready and excited, but halfway through warmup I could tell that even though I was trying to convince myself I was focused that I was indeed not. My mind kept slipping back to the days activities, work, life, love, etc. It makes it really hard to breathe and survive a 90 minutes hot yoga class if your mind is not completely focused; I'd find myself out of breath a a lot. Luckily my english bulldog determination kicked in, and at the beginning of the first usually painful forward bend (standing head to knee) I decided that I needed to focus and not perpetually sit-out this posture and just go for it; do what I can. Wanting to quit the second set and sure my back was gonna twinge any second I persevered through the second set. WOOHOO (I said in my head), now I can do all the postures! So I set out to do every posture this class, especially those ones I am notorious for sitting out. There were a couple of times I had to really push myself, remind myself I was in control (when I was horribly out of breath), and go deep in focus and breathing. I already saw this blog post writing itself .... "I did every posture!". I was so proud of myself even before class ended, but the closer we got to the end of class the more I wondered if I was really going to be able to complete this goal (read: the closer we got to rabbit/head to knee stretching the more I wanted to sit out for an extra savasana). Still I told myself, you can't 'say' you did every posture if you really didn't. So I pushed through and did both sets of every single posture last night. I don't feel near as proud of myself as I could/should, because some postures even though I did, I felt I could have pushed more (later). None-the-less, that's some english bulldog determination.

A rain storm moved by during class, and I kept hoping for Roz to open the door (but know better than to even suggest it). It wasn't until the next to last spine twisting posture that she finally opened the door; an amazingly refreshing reward to a very hot and difficult class. The rain picked up as we laid in our next to last savasana and I proclaimed out loud "Thank you!"