The Goodness in the Bad

529 classes (17 advanced) in 513 days.

There are numerous ways one can gauge their practice and improvement in Bikram yoga. There are obvious ones like getting more flexible or stronger, doing certain postures better, being calmer, etc. While I use these things as a benchmark as well, one of my favorite ways to gauge my progress is how I do in classes when I don’t feel very good walking in, such as being really tired, a little under the weather, have some nagging soreness, etc. When the conditions are perfect, room feels great, I feel great, then of course I can do the postures better that day. This is one way to measure improvement, but it’s a fairly easy one.

The real trick is to not feel good at all and still keep your focus and get something positive out of the class. Yesterday was a great example of this. First, I took the normal class at 9 AM and I absolutely did not want to be there. I was tired and fighting off a cold. The class was packed and I was right in front of the podium. Before class the teacher (Jen) was talking to some first timers who were right behind me and she made a big point that they should watch me! Normally this is no big deal, but I was not in the mood for this. However, it served as a nice motivating factor for me, and I overcame my obstacles and did well, and hopefully I set a good example for the people behind me.

Then later in the day after debating whether I should go at all, I took advanced class. I was concerned going in since I was still fighting off this cold, but amazingly I didn’t feel sick for one second during the class and it went fine. Funny how that works sometimes with class.

Greg