Before you begin reading, please follow the link below and play the accompanying music:
A lil Guns N Roses
If I thought I was completing day 6 of my challenge in White River Junction, I was totally wrong. I was REALLY practicing in a remote Amazonian jungle, among a roomful of other sweaty savages.
Although I have a tendency to be somewhat dramatic, I promise you the humidity in the hot room last night rivaled any South American reading on a Hygrometer (new word, just learned today!).
Our guest teacher for the night was absolutely phenomenal--his only admitted faux pas was that he didn't quite have the heating system mastered (to be expected when it is your first visit on site). Given such, it was around the end of the standing series when people started dropping like flies. The air was thick and cloudy, my eyes literally pooling with sweat. As I have mentioned before the energy in class is always different, and last night it really became its own person in the room...taking control of EVERYONE. Once the first person went down (to the ground, hoping to escape the cloud of heat) it was all I could think of.
I thankfully completed the standing series, but by the end of the spine strengthening postures I was alternating every other first set of postures with a DOUBLE Savasana (In non-yogi terms, this translates to me laying on the floor in Dead Body posture TWICE as long as the rest of the class).
It's hard NOT to feel frustrated when you seem to have zero control over your body, and the room starts closing in around you...but THAT is exactly what my yoga became about last night. As new teacher Mike said "The postures are NOT the destination, YOU are the destination." And with that, I willingly gave into the rest my body demanded, concentrated only on my breathing, and tried to let everything else GO.
It isn't easy, letting go. And being the classic Type A gal I can sometimes be, I much prefer to be standing and participating and mastering the postures. But as I am slowly learning, the postures are just the vehicle carrying me along this amazing journey.
Namaste
"The true measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges" ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
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