I wish I could say that I was virtuous last night, that I came home and wrote in my blog about Day 11... but that is not what happened. After clearing a trail in the Stony Brook Watershed for four hours--dressed like a ten-year-old boy and sweating my metaphorical balls off in my Carharts--and sweating through yet another class that left me wetter than if I'd been swimming, I picked up a salad from Whole Foods, came home, cracked a beer (okay, maybe 2) and flopped into my chair for a marathon of my very guilty pleasure, Criminal Minds (see cast w/ Grimace, above... in an informal poll, this show was judged to be an even guiltier pleasure than the Horrible Housewife People).
Which means I didn't get a chance to document the day that I finally got my proverbial head to my proverbial knee! Right side only, second set only, but still--after however many years of practicing this yoga (10+?) and never, ever being able to do that, it was worth celebrating, especially on a day where I was so exhausted didn't think I was going to be able to make it through class.
For the record, I don't feel all that guilty about the beers. And I don't feel guilty about continuing to drink coffee, either. Hey, folks, I'm only human. I can only handle so much austerity at a time. My body, my consequences.
I should put that on a bumper sticker.
But consequences there appeared to be. Don't know if it was the beer, the rapid change in the weather, or just the onset of a good, old-fashioned cold, but I woke up feeling like someone had pumped hot lead into my Gary Sinuses (I should explain that this is the name with which I've christened my sinuses. You're welcome, Gary Sinise). Holy shit, the pain.
They say it's good to do hot yoga when you're ill (except when you have a fever--I imagine that diarrhea or nausea would also be a dicey proposition, but whatever, I'm no doctor), and it's particularly good for dealing with congestion. That may be so, but ladies and gentleman, let me be the first to inform you that it HURTS. Forward bends, where the mucus pools up in the face, are particularly painful. But afterwards--oh, such relief. A lot of said mucus gets worked out of the system and you leave feeling way better than when you came in. That being said, I'm still not 100%. Thank goodness I don't have to take class again until tomorrow afternoon--my body needs a little rest.
Speaking of which, I gave myself permission to go easy today since I was feeling under the weather. An awesome woman (and triathlete) in one of my classes--I think her name is Lauren but it's always a little hard to tell and you get to a point where you feel rude asking--told me that in any endurance training of this kind that you should go easy one day, medium the next, and hard the next, then back to easy, etc., etc. I thought that was pretty sound advice. Today I promised myself that I would go easy on the first set of every pose to conserve my strength.
But I didn't do it.
It's my ego, really, that won't let me take it easy. And it's silly. I don't want to look like I'm not trying 100% on each and every pose each and every day. As the dialogue gets more intense, I start feeling guilty if I hold anything back. And yet it's clear that at this stage of the game, for a variety of reasons, my body needs a break.
So that's something that I'm going to work on. That, and figuring out how to dry my swampy, disgusting mat.
Oh--and got the head to the knee on Standing-Head-to-Knee. Second set only... but both sides. Whoot!
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