The Horror...

Yesterday morning I woke up, drank the protein then went to morning class at 8:30. Lynn was teaching us, she is the head of the posture clinic program, so she really knows how to say everything correctly. I thought she was kind of strict the first time I met her but after having her for my posture clinic on Monday, I found she is actually incredibly kind and laid back. I was looking forward to taking the morning class with her and it went ok. I was feeling a bit more tired than on Monday and I was holding a lot of tension in my back and lower stomach, it is stress from posture clinic! I managed to do most of the postures fine and it was a nice warm up for the day.

After breakfast we had lecture with Dr. T about anatomy and then he started talking about heart attacks. Apparently there are several things you can do to avoid heart attacks but the most important is to get Omega 3 vitamins, so start chewing everyone! At 3pm we quickly ran into our group rooms and had posture clinic for an hour.

This time we had another teacher marking us, actually today it was 3 teachers watching our dialogue. I had been stressing about it all morning and feeling really upset that I hadn't gone up on Monday to do it. Bikram talks about the point where your mind, body and soul are aligned and I feel like I was more prepared on Monday, I felt more aligned and in tune with the dialogue and my energy, but I didn't seize the moment.

So they asked for volunteers and I put my hand up, I was #7 in the lineup. As I was sitting on the floor waiting for my turn and watching the others say their dialogue I was getting really nervous, I was feeling waves of dizziness and I couldn't remember the words! I tried to do some deep breathing to calm myself down and it worked for a while but then as my turn came up it all went downhill, I was feeling really lightheaded when I stood up and basically crept up to the line to introduce myself. My dialogue started out really strong, I made everyone laugh by pronouncing some of the good lines in a funnier way and things were going fine for the first pose, Backward Bending.

The second pose started out fine too, I was leading the 3 people in front of me into the pose and they had bent over when suddenly I was aware of the teachers' eyes on me, I forgot a line and then there was just a long awkward silence!!!!! My head was literally spinning so much and I couldn't think of the rest of the pose to save my life. At this point I was about 1/2 way through and I literally just started making up words, throwing in sentences, anything to get to the end of the dialogue. I wasn't even looking at the 3 students I was supposed to be teaching! I stumbled through to the end, I couldn't even put any enunciation on the words since I could barely remember them.

It was seriously bad and I waited for the feedback, feeling pretty embarrassed but at the same time accepting that I hadn't done the best job possible. The three teachers basically told me that I had really fabulous parts and my energy was strong but then when I forgot I just stalled and they said I needed to really keep it even and keep my energy up. They also asked if I had practiced on bodies (ie leading my friends through the pose) and told me it would be 100x better if I tried that before. They also said it was really good that I had smiled the whole way through the dialogue, and also that I have a sweet persona but need to be a bit more firm. I was feeling pretty upset!!!!!!!!!!! I took my place in the line of 3 students and had to get taught the pose 3 times then the hour was over and we had to get ready for the evening class.

On the way there I told my roommate what happened and she reminded me my first posture that I did in front of Bikram was really good and I told her that this one must have been really bad because not one person told me after that I had done a good job. I was feeling so upset and sitting on my yoga mat in the burning heat, waiting for class to begin when another student leaned over and told me I did a good dialogue! I had to look around to make sure she was talking to me but she was, and she told me she really liked the way I did it and thought the teachers were unnecessarily hard on me. It was so nice to hear that since I did put effort into it and I felt a lot better. I did vow to work really hard from now on memorizing the poses though.

The evening class was taught by Jim and it was really good, I was seriously dying, alternating between panicking because of the hot room or panicking because I still have to do another posture by the end of the week and haven't memorized it yet. Also my body was feeling all tired, it really hit me that my body is not always under my control and I need to control my mind first in order to make my body do what I want it too. I was struggling a bit and feeling useless when a thought came to me that I just kept using for the rest of the class and it worked - the only way out is through.

Even though my lungs were burning and my muscles were feeling weak, I just pushed my muscles harder than I wanted to in each pose because I knew that if I rested I would fall behind. Most of the poses really hurt and I wanted to give up but some of them were not so bad! I made it through the class and relearned and old lesson, it is best to face your problems head on, they don't go anywhere but just keep adding up if you don't. The only way out is through them but once you get through there is always something much better on the other side. Also some of the might not be as bad as they seem.

That evening Jim gave us a lecture about owning a studio and how great it is. It seems like a cool thing to do but for now I think I am mostly interested in teaching part time while working full time in my field. We'll see how things go but I know that will be the best way for me, to start out at least. There are also lots of options for traveling and teaching around the world so I am looking forward to hopefully dropping into a few different studios if I am traveling. Bikram came in at the end of the lecture and it was fun to see him, he has been gone all week and none of the other teachers can duplicate his energy and enthusiasm, they don't even try because they're not trying to fill his shoes. He left pretty quickly and we ended lecture around midnight.

I stayed up until 2am studying for my next dialogue and I had a shaky grasp on 1/3 of it. I need to finish and present it by Friday at the latest so I'm stressing but I just need to take every second I can to study it - after class writing doesn't count, it's chill out time :) I woke up this morning at 7:30am with a song in my head I have never heard before, something about go go go and don't give up - I think I made it up. I am seriously cracking up and I can only hope I pull off this crazy dialogue thing and that it's worth it! But the only way out is through and the more I study the dialogue the more I see its' power and the more I am motivated to be a teacher so wish me luck and hopefully the words will stick in my head somehow!!!!!!!!!!!!

x Julia