Bikram Yoga, Day 1

My friend from massage school is visiting her family for the holidays and called me to see if I wanted to try out Bikram Yoga for a month. There's an introductory special for unlimited classes for a month for only $29.00 at this place she found. It's a fantastic deal, so I told her I would. That was about a month ago. Today was our first day.

Now I knew that one of the critical things that separates Bikram Yoga from other types is that it is done in a room that is 105 degrees F. Considering my relationship with heat over the past few months, this might not be a great idea, but I figured I could premedicate myself and hope it would work.

For some reason, I couldn't sleep at all last night. The last time I looked at the clock, it was 4:15, so when it woke me up at 5:00am, I was less than excited to roll out of bed. However, since the web site said that 95% of the effort of your workout is getting there, I lurched myself across the house into the kitchen, had a small snack and my back medication, and went to go get my clothes out of the dryer to get dressed.

Small problem. My clothes weren't in the dryer. They were still in the washing machine. Fortunately I was up early enough I had time to get them in the dryer and get it running. I got the rest of my things together (which wasn't much because I'd put what I could in the car the night before so I wouldn't forget anything) and waited for the dryer.

When my clothes were dry (enough), I got dressed and ran out the door. It was 5:40, the yoga place is 30 minutes away, and I was supposed to be there at 6:00. Somehow I made it.

Also somehow, I didn't get stopped for speeding. *whew*

My friend met me there, we went inside, paid, and went into the toasty room. It wasn't that bad, although we were just sitting there talking and already I was wanting water.

The guy who ran it was really nice and had a soothing yet demanding voice, instructing us vocally as he walked around the room, offering corrections to individuals (I was impressed that he knew nearly everyone by name) and guiding us through the techniques without demonstrating a single one.

I did okay. There were a few poses that I had problems moving through because I can't bend that way with my back--if I moved into them in my own way, I could get there (or to a modified form), but I couldn't go through the path that was instructed. There were other poses that I was flexible enough to do, but I couldn't hold them. Not because I'm not flexible enough, but because there's still enough (meaning a lot) of excess stomach on me and when I pull my thighs to my chest, it compresses my excess stomach into my abdomen, which pushes my regular abdominal contents towards my lungs, which pushes my lungs I don't know where, but it ends up meaning I can't inhale because there's no room left inside of my ribs for my lungs to expand.

Ugh, sometimes it is so hard to exercise when you're not in shape to exercise.

We were probably about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through before I was able to let my thoughts drift from what I was doing to thinking about whether or not I was enjoying myself. The weird thing was, when I thought about it, I couldn't decide.

Since I'm competitive, I decided that the only way I would "enjoy" it would be to challenge myself to get to a certain point; otherwise I wouldn't have motivation to keep it up. Silly, perhaps, but it's the way my mind works, and whatever it takes to get me going is what I'm going to have to do to continue to make change.

From there, I started to think about what I'd write in here. And I thought, "December 13: The day I started Bikram Yoga."

Hmmm. What's familiar about December 13?

And then I remembered.

And I burst into tears.

Four years ago today, my mother died. The tears continued to flow and I ended up not concentrating at all on what I was doing, but rather on not sobbing. It wasn't working; the more I thought about it, the more sad I became.

I seriously considered bolting out of the room and not returning.

Thank goodness I was sweating. The tears blended in just fine with the sweat already running down my (purple overheated) face. I blotted myself with a towel as we were instructed to roll over into a new position and ended up looking at a purple lotus flower painted on the wall. I spent quite a bit of time staring at it and the colors on it, trying to think about that rather than anything else so I could stop crying.

It mostly worked.

I managed to finish the class and the instructor asked everyone to applaud for me for making it through my first class. It made me feel nice to have a room full of people cheering for me (and was also a good distraction from my sadness).

I went in to the women's room to change and someone else who had been in the class told me how well I did--that just making it through without leaving the room was a success, and to keep it up. That too, made me feel better.

I met my friend out front and ran out to my car to get my phone--I was expecting a call from my doctor regarding my headaches (because Kaiser would rather make me take a phone appointment or send me to urgent care than let me see my doctor, long story). As I was about to head back in, another woman from class came up to me and was very positive and encouraging and offered me advice about breathing.

She too said I did a good job managing to stay in the room--that many people can't their first time. I talked with her for a bit, then my friend, then couldn't figure out why, since I even got a reminder phone call about my phone doctor appointment, I hadn't received a call from my doctor (it was now 25 minutes late).

Turns out he had called only 15 minutes late but my phone didn't decide to let me know until after the voice mail had been there for 10 minutes.

Finally I got to speak to him and (as I had thought), his thoughts are that I have what are called analgesic rebound headaches. Essentially, what I was taking for the headaches was the cause, so every time it would wear off the headache would come back. He told me to stay off of the back pain medication for a week and he'd give me something else.

He prescribed an anti-inflammatory.

I'm sorry, but I've used anti-inflammatories off and on for the last six years for my back and they don't do ANYTHING. Okay, so I can't see what they might be doing to help me at a microscopic level, but even when taking them regularly, I felt no difference, and since I've read that they can be harmful to your heart after long periods of time, I'm not excited about taking any more.

The migraine creeping in from my early-morning dosage was horrendous by time I got home and it was all I could do to crash in bed. I felt like the worst mother ever, getting up only to feed, change a movie, or (sorry for oversharing) wipe my daughter until the headache finally eased off around 4:00.

I drank what water I could, although the headache was bad enough that I was worried the water wouldn't stay where it belonged.

I'll have to see how Wednesday yoga goes without the back pain meds. I'm glad to be rid of them, but also scared that I'm going to end up in my pain cycle that landed me at this weight in the first place.

One day at a time.