Halfway There!!

With today marking the start of our descent to the end, a guest blogger was gracious enough to write some motivational and heart warming words! Enjoy Challengers, Bikram yogis,friends and family....


Before you delve too deeply into this blog entry, I must confess at the start that I’m not actually Lindsay. Although I have red hair, am short(er than Lindsay), and do yoga every day, I am a merely guest to her blog.  However, I do have a vested interest in Lindsay’s progress in the 30 day challenge and in her dogged determination to raise money for the challenge’s worthy cause…The Grace Fund. I’m the owner of Hot Yoga Saratoga and Lindsay’s first Bikram Yoga teacher. While I certainly can’t take all of the credit for Lindsay’s yoga skilz, I have had the pleasure of being able to watch her grow as a yogini on and off the mat for the last year and a half. Not only has she become an extremely focused practitioner on the mat, but she has become one of my favorite people off the mat as well. If you’ve been reading her blog, you’ve hopefully had more than a few occasions to appreciate why. The fact that she is taking her time to share her ups and downs for the next 30 days with friends, family and likely even some strangers, reveals what an open and honest (and hilarious) person she truly is. If you aren’t doing the 30 day challenge, you’re only getting a glimpse of how much work and effort Lindsay (and each individual challenger) is putting into this endeavor…..so feel lucky you’re on the outside looking in. If you’re one of the challengers, you already know how awesome Lindsay is as a person, a yogini, and a silent leader….and also what kinds of physical and emotional struggles she is enduring.

With Lindsay’s blessing, I am writing in her stead to give her a break and to write some encouraging words….both as a teacher and as a student participating in the Challenge. As we approach the halfway point of the 30 day challenge, people (myself included) are showing signs of fatigue and frustration.
Like most days in that hot room, there is no rhyme or reason for why we feel what we feel or experience what we experience (or why we continue to return to the mat for that matter). While some days we try to blame the greasy French fries we succumbed to just 2 hours before class, or the wine we felt obligated to drink at the party the night before, we cannot so easily explain away the tears, panic, or emotional turmoil that we so commonly experience or witness in that room. What are these moments in time?

Having experienced the Bikram Yoga training first hand, which I consider to be a macrocosm of the HYS 30 day challenge (300 people instead of 30; 9 weeks instead of 4), and having been a Bikram Yoga teacher for the last 3 years, I know that almost every Bikram Yoga student will, at some time, experience frustration, panic, suffering, and/or emotional turmoil during a class for no other reason than the fact that they are human. But what is it about that heat, that collective energy or that annoying teacher in a Bikram class that inspires students to act in more human ways than they would ever allow themselves to act in any other public setting? At training, I saw grown men and women shaking in tears on their mat without an ounce of remorse; I saw young girls bleeding on their mat from menstruation without an ounce of embarrassment; I saw myself crumble at the knees without an ounce of shame.  For me personally, I have experienced some of my most humbling and most invigorating moments in the hot room….I have felt the most alive (even though I wanted to die). I have never felt so connected to the people around me while feeling so alone at the same time.  There is something about the collective pulse of a Bikram Yoga class that is awe-inspiring. The Bikram dialogue is not a monologue; it is a conversation between the teacher and the students. While the students are not verbally responding, they are physically responding in ways that are much more profound. Only a Bikram practitioner can appreciate and understand the real-life drama that unfolds in every class: why a grown man crying or a girl menstruating, or anyone crumbling at their knees for that matter, represents nothing more than a moment in time. There is an unspoken bond between Bikram practitioners that goes much deeper than the mat. Despite my resistance, and my efforts to rationalize the events and personal experiences unfolding at training, I finally succumbed to a process that was greater than me.  Like each of us in this 30 Day Yoga-Thon Challenge, I was a small, but NECESSARY, part of a bigger whole.

Yoga, in its most basic terms, is about union….union with God and between body and breath. It is also the union of individuals co-conspiring in a greater purpose, whether that be a mere yoga class, a fundraiser, or changing the world we inhabit for better. For me, and perhaps for the challengers who are embarking on this journey, this union becomes most manifest in our greatest moments of agony and emotional defeat.  In the end, we all overcome….together. (As Lindsay pointed out, I’ve neither witnessed nor heard of someone dying in a Bikram Yoga class.) So, when you’re having some of your most profound moments of struggle or disappointment in the next 16 days, or in your yoga career for that matter, remember that you’re human, that you’re alive and that you are a part of a much bigger whole. Find strength in that rather than defeat in the moment.

Thanks to Lindsay for being a huge and necessary part of this whole, for her inspiration and her honesty.  We love you! My best to all Challengers in the second half of this month…..and if the above doesn’t help you to persevere, just remember the party at the end! I love you all in ways that no blog can adequately convey.