Thursday, March 3, 2011

Ow (Day 2)

After yesterday's hot yoga, I was wary of how I would feel this morning. Since your muscles are externally warmed in hot yoga, you tend to go deeper into positions, which is part of the appeal. If you are not used to this, however, you will be stunned by how sore you are the next day. To be honest, this first week is the one I've been terrified of. Once my muscles get used to doing Yoga every single day I think they'll work with me more, but for the first week I was expecting my muscles to protest at every turn, screaming for me to return to a life of sloth.  Surprisingly I wasn't too bad this morning, a little tenderness in the lower back and forearms, but nothing like the "I am never going to be able to move again" kind of soreness I have experienced in the past. I smiled to myself as I packed up the yoga mat. "I'm going to breeze through this month!"

Foolish, foolish girl. I decided on a 90 minute Vinyasa class, no heat, just flowing poses and breathing. It was a little different then other classes I've taken, we started with some floor poses instead of going straight into the sun salutations. I was gliding along just fine. Then we got up, and flowed into Downward Facing Dog. Okay, I was feeling the tender parts, not too bad. Then the teacher (a lovely woman with a hard to place accent named Merav) instructed us to lift a leg off the floor, and rotate it back. Then sweep it in and touch the knee to our shoulder. Then sweep it out again. That's when I knew I was in trouble.

Apparently my muscles were just fine with going about the day to day activities, but hauling them into another yoga class was going to far. "This is bullshit!" they screamed, "we just did this yesterday!" Everyone else in class was a combination of people who were more skilled then me, people who had done this particular sequence before, and people that probably weren't on day 2 of a crazy plan. That's when I did something I haven't done for quite awhile. I dropped the pose. I let my knees come to my mat and for 5 seconds, I kinda quit. This is something I did a lot when I had first started yoga 5 years ago, when my shoulders and wrists had no strength or muscle memory to get into the kinda poses I was attempting. While yoga teachers will be quick to tell you that people shouldn't be judging each others practices and that everyone moves at their own pace, the truth is its friggen embarrassing when your in a room full of people with their fingers reaching to the sky, and your hands are planted on the mat while you try to catch your breath. "Get up," I grumbled to myself, and I did.

I was getting nervous. If I was collapsing on a few difficult positions in the first 20 minutes of class, what was I going to do in the other 70 minutes? But I stayed, and I worked, and miraculously, it got kinda better. I still felt downright spastic a few times (in case you were wondering, it turns out I am not ready for a full forearm stand) but my muscles kinda stopped trying to just quit and give up. They stuck with me. I breathed, they held on, we made it through class together.

I'm proud of myself, but I'm wary of tomorrow. In order to have as much of Friday evening to myself as possible, I've decided to hit the 1 hour 7am yoga flow class. Which means getting up at 6am and it means 2 yoga classes in 12 hours. Don't tell my muscles. They are never going to forgive me. I'm pretty sure my spine is going to be pissed too.

1 comment:

  1. i'm proud of you!!! keep going, it will (eventually) feel amazing!! while i haven't started a "crazy" month of yoga, i am trying to push harder at the gym and go more often, if only for some stress relief!

    i love you!! go yoga princess!!!

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