RE: Your natural ability to correct yourself.

As you may know, I am training for the Illinois Asana Championships. This involves finding two 'freestyle' poses. These poses can be any pose from the advanced series. A feat complicated by the fact that I have never taken an advanced class. A friend and fellow competitor has had the privilege of being able to yell, "Cock!" on stage for the last several years under the guise that his posture is called that. Being thrilled with the idea of screaming "COCK!" to an audience without being thrown from the stage, I wanted to try my hand at the pose.

A teacher I highly admire was giving me some pointers last week. Showing me how to lean forward into the pose, the teacher encouraged me to lean forward as far as I could onto my palms. "When you feel like you may fall forward tighten your belly and pull up. Don't worry that you will fall forward, you will catch yourself before you do." he said, helpfully.

I pointed out that I had, not one week earlier, tried a transition into crow pose from standing. In this transition, when another teacher said, "Now lean forward and bend your elbows down just a bit." My elbows bent, wiggled a bit and gave way. I collapsed, face-first, into the floor. I heard a little 'pop' when as my nose hit, but there was no blood. Which is good because, out of embarrassment, I quickly threw myself up to standing, hands above head and shouted, "Im okay! Everything's good!" This would have looked even more ridiculous had there been blood streaming from my face.

One week prior:

The teacher was unmoved by my story of peril. In fact, it proved his point. "See," he explained happily, "you stopped yourself with your face!"

I am now absolutely sure that the fact that I am frightened of neither the instructor nor the pose verifies that I am mentally deficient.

An Introduction

What makes me qualified to write a blog about Bikram Yoga? Nothing. But isn't that the beauty of yoga? You can walk in overweight, head twisted around sideways, shaking from stress, and rather than looking annoyed as you struggle to twist yourself into a pretzel, the teachers get this crazed look in their eyes like a kid with hard candy stuck to his pudgy cheeks has just walked into their fudge shoppe. They almost froth at the mouth at the opportunity to mend people that the untrained eye would judge inadequate candidates for yoga. As such, I deem my inexperience as no obstacle.

Now that we have established that I have no business writing this blog you may ask, "Why would I?" A very reasonable inquiry.

Simple. I like my boyfriend and want him to stay with me.

Let me explain. I have a very limited repertoire for conversation. The few subjects that have caught my 3.2 second attention span become so interesting to me that I find most people are baffled by my ability to hold 4 hour conversations, often without pausing for breath, about what, to anyone else, is roughly as interesting as watching dust-bunnies form.

For example: eagle pose

In an effort to spare my longtime boyfriend from an eternity of maddening drivel I will push my yoga babble onto the rest of the world. SOMEONE has got to think eagle pose is the funniest thing EVER besides me.

P.S. Bookmark this page if you have any interest in Bikram Yoga, cats or graphic design! Mostly this will be about Bikram, but there are bound to be more than a few other things my boyfriend would rather I shout into the internet abyss than share with him...again. It's a safe bet that those things will involve my other two subjects of conversation.

P.P.S. Bookmark this page if you have no interest whatsoever in yoga! My boyfriend can vouch for its content's ability to lull even the most stubborn insomniac into a sleep-like trance!