On Thursday I had evening plans and so I needed to get to yoga before work. There was a 06:30 flow class which was the only option. This was day 10 of my 30-day hot yoga challenge marking the 1/3 point.
Studio rules mean that you can skip one day a week on the 30 day challenge so long as you do two classes on another day that same week (Monday to Sunday). However I was going to be at a Wedding on Friday so I couldn’t miss practice on Thursday too.
So it would have to be the 06:30 class and it was pretty intense.
I had last eaten at about 6pm on Wednesday before yoga, so by the time I got to the 90 minute flow class I hadn’t eaten for 12 hours and had done the Wednesday night 90 minute Bikram class. I felt dizzy and weak and achy.
After class someone commented how my class had been weak and that my practice is normally better than that and I found myself entering a monologue of excuses, then I thought how it was totally irrelevant to justify my practice because the truth is that I didn’t give a fuck that I had a ‘bad class’. Yes it felt wildly unpleasant, but I don’t care that it was bad.
I try to practice with equanimity. I will have easy classes and difficult classes, but believing that good classes are better than the bad ones is a mistake, because the bad ones teach you and improve you as much as the good ones do.
Learning to not have adversion to the hard classes or attachment to the good ones is one of the most important lessons yoga has taught me. Bringing that concept out from the studio into my life has given me a lot of peace and clarity.
