My thoughts wonder off to what's been said in a recent class, how every individual will expose their personality and characteristics though their Bikram yoga practice.
A couple examples where given, such as:
When your postures look different as to other postures in the room you are probably not the best listener; when you sit down a lot during classes there is a fair chance that you give up easily in life; if you always start late in postures and finish early you could be kind of a loner; if you never give your all it would probably mean you are somewhat lazy; if you skip a specific posture continuously because you don't like it you avoid confrontation in unpleasant situations etc etc..
I found this quite interesting and observed my practice carefully with this in mind.
About a year ago I always skipped camel & triangle posture. I hated these postures cause it made my heart beat like crazy, it was quite the task on my poor muscles, it made me nauseous & dizzy and on a bad day also quite emotional. Just thinking about executing these postures actually made me feel unwell already so I almost always just didn't do them at all just to avoid the 'pain' and awkwardness.
True story is that this was reflecting on how I would react on random 'real life' negativity. I would always avoid awkwardness and confrontations.
The idea that you can actually change your 'not too fantastic' characteristics by changing how you practice Bikram Yoga sounds magical to me, also because I've seen it work for me. - Nowadays I don't skip postures anymore and neither do I avoid confrontations in life.
In all honestly, I still don't love confrontations and won't go look for them, but it's been a big improvement for me.
My new goal now is giving at least a 100% in the full length of all postures. Yes.... I am somewhat lazy.... but this might change soon..!?
I went through today's practice in my 70% mode. Not a great start to my new found goal... SIGH..
I hoped the teacher wouldn't notice my slacking and I therefore displayed (acted) a great bit of exhaustion. I was excited for every posture to be over an done with and the word 'change!' has never sounded better.
Then, all of a sudden, during the floor bow pose the teacher (and also founder of the school and 5x Bikram champion legend) said out loud "beautiful Fiona, you must demonstrate this for everyone".
For a second I thought I'd fallen asleep and dreamed this but..no,.... noop...everyone is looking at me...
Humbled and completely confused I looked at him and hoped for a way out but there definitely was no way out on this one. I have seen it happen before, to word 'no' is non-existent..
With a 120 eyes on me I performed floor bow pose.
I want to say that I felt embarrassed but the embarrassment was kind of overruled by the fact that I was actually flattered.
He praised my practice and mentioned that 'young miss Fi' has not been practicing for too long (he asked me how long and I gave an overwhelmed '1.5 year' as my answer. He continued that I had improved so very much in a short time and that many people in the room will probably think I am a legend.. >> Yes... really.. he said that. And no... really... I am not at all.
A few people kept glancing at me during the rest of class so I definitely finished strong.
Gosh, I love this teacher now... That's all it takes; a couple of awesome compliments and your loved in my life :-)
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