Shirl the Yoga Girl: Week 7 and 75 classes done!

I thought when I had my emotional breakdown in week 3, I had pretty much cleared out the toxins in my cells. Wrong! Week 7 was another emotional week. It was a combination of lack of sleep [although not so bad since Bikram wasn't here most of the week], the pressure of memorizing dialogue, then saying the dialogue in Posture Clinic, plus the two yoga classes a day have been catching up to me. All my body parts have atrophied!

It is said that you keep all the memories of all your old hurts and injuries, whether emotional or physical, in the cells of your body. The yoga enables you to release these memories [and toxins] out of your system. Since I was a smoker for 30 years, even though I have not smoked for 5 years now, I would imagine some of those toxins were still in me. And let's face it, NO ONE [least of all me], goes through life without being emotionally or physically hurt or scarred at some point. This baggage can stay suppressed inside you. If you don't get it out, it shows up in the form of illness or dis-ease. In my case, it showed up as a buddha-belly, symbolically "stuffing my emotions in".

Physically, my body hasn't changed that much since I started here 7 weeks ago. I have lost some of my buddha-belly but I thought I would have lost some of that extra 30 lbs I have been carrying for the last 5 years. You burn 700-900 calories per class x 2 classes a day = 1400-1800 calories! A lot of students here are actually gaining weight. According to the teachers here, once we leave teacher training, in the next 3-6 months our bodies will be completely transformed. The excess weight will just melt away - I can't wait for that! Right now though, the body needs to hang onto those calories to get us through training.

I also now realize that taking a few yoga classes is not going to magically get rid of all of my baggage. It is a life-long journey, but once you give yourself permission to just let go of the crap from your past instead of clinging to it, it becomes easier and easier to move forward [in so many ways].