Bikram Yoga, Day 5

Today again felt like I made more progress in yoga, which is a good thing, but also, since I want to take "beginning" pictures, not as great because I'm already further than I was when I started.

The instructor agreed to do the photos after class, but it took so long for the studio to empty and the front desk replacement was late, so we only got a few of the poses done.

Hopefully I will be able to get to it on Friday, although I'm not sure if that's realistic since it will be Christmas eve.

Bikram Yoga, Day 4

Thankful that yesterday was over, I went to yoga again this morning.

GOOD NEWS! in the "balancing stick" pose (I think that's what it's called), I was able to actually lift my back leg off of the floor for the first time.

Technically, balancing stick is a one-legged stand, with the rest of the body forming a horizontal "T" position. MY balancing stick so far has been more like an upside-down lowercase "y" position because I haven't been able to lift my back leg off of the floor. Not because of weakness or strength, but because it turns on the hot burning knife twisting and poking into my sacrum feeling.

So while lifting my back leg off of the floor by an inch might not seem like much, it's one of those huge milestone progress items for me because it's something I haven't been able to do for SIX YEARS.

What's even cooler is that I did it without pain medication, and after only four days of yoga.

Afterward, I talked to the instructor. I finally came up with how I want to track my progress. I'm hoping to take pictures of myself in each pose, and soon. I want it to be as close a reflection to my "starting" point as possible. Then retake photos in 3-6 months and repeat as I progress. He said he would be happy to help and we could do it after class sometime.

I came home from yoga, ran around wrapping the baby shower present, getting showered and changed, and trying to get everything together. I ended up not having time to get to DEQ and went straight to the baby shower.

It was fun seeing my cousin all pregnant and glowing. She looked fantastic and I have to admit I was jealous because she totally looks better pregnant than I do right now.

Not a very positive self-image on my part, but that's why I'm working on changing things.

My daughter had a blast staying at Grandpa's house with her cousins and didn't want to leave. My sister offered to take her another night, which I might just have to take her up on.

A Very Long Day of Nothing

Thinking that my sister was coming back sometime in the morning to help out with the house, I stayed home while my husband went up to the mountain with my daughter and our friends.

I did a little cleaning, a little sewing, and alternated between the two through the day.

Midafternoon I started getting annoyed.

When my sister called, I found out she wasn't planning on coming back until tomorrow (Monday). Apparently somewhere we had a little tiny (actually huge) miscommunication.

This meant that 1) I was trapped at home without a car all day long and 2) I could have gone and spent the day with my family in the snow instead.

Completely irritated (and not yet calm enough to look at the situation rationally) when my husband got home, I went into troll mode and about bit his head off.

He, of course, had no idea what was wrong with me.

My dad ended up driving up to get me because I had to have my car to get places in the morning, included DEQ.

I did leave my daughter at my Dad's house though. Tonight will be her very first night without one of her parents. Since we cosleep (she sleeps in the bed with us), this is actually a very big deal. I did my best to prepare her for it and I'm sure she'll be fine, but I'm curious to see how it goes.

My sister thought it would be good for my husband and I to have some time as a couple and go do something, but when I got home, I fell asleep instead.

Finally, a Visit to Dr. Amy

So because I didn't schedule enough in advance, I didn't get to go to the chiropractor this week on Tuesday like normal and had to wait until today. Thank goodness for the yoga, because I've now been without any kind of painkiller for 5 days. I don't think I would have made it without the yoga.

Dr. Amy approved and encouraged me to continue with the yoga. I struggled so much though to sit up after my prone treatments that she asked if I had an exercise ball I could bring to rest on next time to see if I could decrease the amount of discomfort when I get up.

Know what else? My last headache was Monday--the last day I took the Tramadol. Tuesday was rough pain wise, but my head felt like I was coming out of a fog. I've known I wanted to be done with the stuff, but wow, what a difference.

The anti-inflammatory didn't do anything for me though. I'm so tired of taking those with no benefit I can feel that I quit taking it too.

I got home and was trying to get things to a point where my sister and I could work on cleaning and organizing, but she had promised a friend she would visit, so I let her take my car, and she was planning on spending the night with my dad, so I told her as long as she came back tomorrow (Sunday), it would be fine.

I was hoping to try to get to the 4:00 yoga class, but my husband was out with his car doing Christmas shopping (for me, so I wasn't invited), so I was carless.

I decided I'd better hurry up and start sewing Christmas presents that were going to be homemade.

And put off cleaning yet another day.

Bikram Yoga, Day 3

I'm still not terribly enjoying getting up this early. I would so much rather stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning and roll out of bed at 10:00am than force myself to try to go to sleep early (which doesn't usually work) and then struggle to get going in the morning.

Oddly, I'm waking up about a half hour before my alarm goes off. I think if I just got up and stayed up I'd be fine, but when I realize I have another half hour to sleep and then try and utilize it, that's when I can't get up again.

My instructor showed me some modifications of the poses for me to use. Some of them are frustrating--like one where the end pose is bent over a straight leg--I can do that, just not wrap my fingers around my toes. The modification, which is bending my knee all the way up to my chest, I still can't completely wrap my fingers (again the excess stomach baggage blocking me from compressing completely) AND I'm not stretching.

It's interesting though, coming from a coaching background and having to just take instructions and not argue.

My job is just to hang in there and do what I can. I'm already noticing changes, which is good, but as with everything else I'm working on, the end goal is a LONG ways away yet.

Today my sister and her two kids arrived. The original plan was that she would come and help me organize/clean my house, but right after she arrived I had to leave to go give a client a massage, then take my Level 9 judging test (I've failed it twice and haven't studied much; my hopes aren't high for this time around), then go swimming with everyone.

I packed all the swimming stuff with me, knowing my husband would be late and I was likely to arrive first and possibly even be done with my own swimming workout before he even got there.

That's not quite what happened.

1) I arrived a little late for my judging test, holding up the process (they were nice and waited for me)

2) The other girl and I talked for a bit and asked questions before we even started the test.

3) The test took longer than I remembered.

4) I was so late for swimming that we didn't even go. We would have had only 20 minutes left, and at $6.50 a person, that seemed a bit expensive.

So we decided to go to my husband's former workplace, which has a hot tub.

It closed--and I'm not exaggerating--two minutes before we got there.

I decided to do another grocery run while my husband stayed and played with our daughter and our friend's family.

So much for family swim night.

I got home after 10:00pm.

So much for cleaning/organizing the house.

Bikram Yoga, Day 2

In comparison to my entire one other day of Bikram Yoga, today was easier and felt a little bit shorter. It still seems like the longest hour and a half EVER, but not like Monday's, which felt like 3 days long.

We had a different instructor today. He seems very good (like Monday's instructor). He spent much less time helping out the newbies as compared to the guy on Monday, but was still kind and patient.

It was really nice knowing (sort of) what to expect this time though.

Warning: oversharing ahead. I just wish that I could make it through a class without farting. I don't know what it is about this; maybe it's some of the poses and the way they push on my abdomen, but I hate that I've had at least one sneaker toot escape my control each class.

At least I'm not the only one, though. I heard a couple of others today and was so relieved it's not just me that I wanted to actually thank them.

The biggest problem was that coming home, there was a SEVERE traffic jam. I took some side roads, which helped until I got stuck behind a bunch of other people with the same idea. I didn't get back home until 9:10--which meant my husband had to call in to his 9:00am work meeting. Oops.

I was pleased though that I was able to feel that some of the poses were not as difficult as the first time. I'm trying to figure out a way that I can track my progress, but I'm not sure how I'll do that yet.

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.