2:30 pm Sunday with Miranda
These were two very different classes. Yesterday it was hot, and tough, and I felt pretty good throughout. Today, it started out cold and gradually warmed up. The class did not seem objectively as tough, but I was having some troubles toward the end. I think the problem today was the lack of a good warm up.
Before class I was talking to a woman who has practiced in 6 different studios, including two in Boston, one in Dubai of all places, and the downtown studios here in Houston. She said that this was the coolest of any of the places she has practiced, and also said that its the only studio she has been in with fans. In Dubai, she said the studio was hotter, but to get it to that temperature, they still had to use air conditioners. Outside, it was typically 12o degrees when she went to class.
Yesterday, Lenette said that she had heard several people ask her to give other teachers some lessons on controlling the heat, because some classes have been too cold. Her answer was that, to a large extent, you can control your own heat through your breathing. (Other yoga practices use the throat breathing we do in pranayama to help warm up their bodies, and it definitely works.) And since we have our own internal mechanisms that can add to the heat, she suggested that we stop bitching and do our yoga. Very funny.
As for the yoga, yesterday I felt hot and a bit weak, but more flexible than usual. So I did well in the poses that emphasize stretching, but had what seemed like a weak back strengthening series, awkward pose, triangle, etc... Balancing was mediocre. Nothing really stood out.
This morning, it was quite the opposite. I felt really strong, and did great in the strength poses. But I wasn't very flexible at all, I think because of the lack of heat (it finally got up to about 100 or 101), and because that led to less of a warm up. Balancing was very good today. I only made it completely through one part each of Standing Head to Knee and Standing Bow. But I came close on all the other parts. When I fell out in Standing Head to Knee it was because I was trying at the end to lock my kicking leg. And in Standing Bow I fall out because the stretch just starts to get too intense in the standing leg and butt.
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