I'm only on the 5th day of this challenge and already I'm feeling beaten up and a bit exhausted. Maybe I'm getting a little sick. Maybe I need more sleep. Maybe I'm not hydrating enough or getting enough electrolytes. But for the second day in a row, class was a struggle, and unlike yesterday, today I could not simply decide to pull myself out of it and turn the class around. I tried, and it maybe helped a little. But it was still tough.
I had a new experience today. My mat was near the window and the morning sun was shining through. At first, this was really nice. Then the window started to fog a little with sweat, and those beads of water seemed to focus the sunlight, which also started to shine more directly on me. So it got hotter and hotter right where I was. That may have had something to do with my not getting my energy back in the floor series. Anyway, from now on, I'm going to think twice before setting up for an early morning class by the window.
In yesterday's meditation, Gates talked about how you only hear and understand lessons when you are ready to learn from them. I don't think this would come as a surprise to any Bikramite. I don't know how many times I've suddenly heard, or realized something, about the dialogue only at the point when my body was ready to do that thing.
There was a phrase I particularly liked when he was talking about his own practice, he was learning to get "glimpses of the hugeness of the ordinary." Thomas Hardy once said something to the effect that there are no boring landscapes and no boring towns, and that becoming bored by such showed a character flaw, a lack of imagination. I think this is the sort of thing that Gate's is getting at when he talks about the hugeness of the ordinary. It goes back to his first definition of the practice of yoga as "celebrating what is". The idea is to become open and involved with otherwise everyday things.
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