60 day challenge 2020

2020 is something.. 

In spite of the virus raging in China and slowly making its way here, the January-March 60 day challenge was on. I started on Jan 1st and finished the challenge 7 days ahead. 

There was no travel and that actually made it easy. I still did doubles early on because there was a flight ticket in my inbox that keep moving to a later date and eventually got cancelled. 

Since the stay at home order, have been continuing the Yoga at home with recorded dialogues from my teachers. Have done another 60 day challenge staying at home after the original one.

There is obviously no party to celebrate, no stories to share. We are all part of the most interesting story of our lifetime with COVID-19.  Surviving this is the only priority. 

Yoga has definitely continued to keep me sane during these times. 

Michelle was nice enough to fly me a T-Shirt at BYSJ! She has also been teaching on Zoom and still predicts with millisecond accuracy on when I am about to give up, unlock my knee and gives corrections online once a week. All my teachers also give me corrections based on photos and videos I post on the group forums. 

Sincerely hope to do yoga in a hot room soon enough! cannot wait.. it was hard to be outside BYSJ and not do Yoga!

Here is the picture with the shirt and my shaved head to go with it!

Was going to ask my kids to draw the last airbender tattoo pattern on my head with a sharpie to take this picture and decided against it.. who knows if I will get an allergic reaction to the sharpie. . maybe with Mehendi... if my wife or MIL are up to it.. it is not like I am going out to meet anyone for another 20 days at least.. 

Now for the charts..

for the first time I did a class every day in the 60 days and 2 on some days in 2020.. 

My weight was okay during the challenge but since then I have added a couple of pounds.. 

Hope there is another challenge later this year when the Yoga studio reopens and I get to practice with all you fellow yogis! 

Thank you BYSJ and all the teachers for doing what you do, even in these tough times to keep us fit and sane! 

Ill wind blows no one any good

My yoga teacher told me this and I had to go Google it. Somehow never came across that one in the past. 

The idea is that even in the depths of an overwhelmingly bad situation, someone has something good come out of it. 

What is the context?

Well, I usually have at least two if not three Asia trips in the middle of a 60 day challenge at BYSJ and that means I am doing a lot of doubles to finish the challenge. This year, the trip has been pushed from 5th to 13th to 27th to now March, because of the ill wind that is called Coronavirus. While it is all doom and gloom, I have managed to do yoga 44 times in 39 days without missing a day so far. 

It is great to be able to do yoga once a day without missing a day. I now really envy people who don't have to travel as part of their jobs. 

While the travel cancellation has been a good thing, the challenge has not been a walk in the park. Three weeks ago, I bought some mixture from the local Indian grocery store. One bite and I thought it had some stone in it. Then the pain hit me and I realized a big chunk of my pre-molar tooth just broke off in the back. The molar was already removed six years ago. 

Was in a lot of pain that night. My dentist was nice enough to come on her day off the following morning to try and do a temporary fix. Then she found that the tooth in front of it was hanging on for dear life. The gums were not gripping it. So they cleaned it, put some gel in there and now I am brushing my teeth and gargling antibacterial stuff after pretty much anything goes in my mouth with the exception of water. I have the broken piece as a souvenier.

There were 4 visits in the last 14 days.. I still managed to do the 8:30PM class after the anesthetic wore off. I am not allowed to do Yoga after taking Ibuprofen. You need to be able to know when you are stretching to the point of creating pain and the ibuprofen will mask that. San was calling me an idiot three times a day for not taking pain killers, but you have to do what you have to do.. for the 60 day challenge!

The last week while going through all this, I was also stuck. One thing that I look forward to after every class is putting a sticker on the board. The sticker is only a token and there is excel sheet to track every class anyways, but the sticker is joy. It was not like there were no stickers. There were.. but not the same ones that were handed out the first four weeks of the challenge. 

The front desk folks at BYSJ told me that they could not find the original stickers anywhere after trying at many stores so they had to switch stickers. I have difficulty eating bagels if they don't fit precisely after coming out of the toaster. Changing to a different sticker in the middle of the challenge was bugging me..maybe it was the tooth doing the bothering.. but it doesn't matter. Found the sticker at Michael's and got the one last packet of stickers they had of that type. There is just enough blue stars in this to get me through the challenge.

It felt good to put a bunch of stickers back on the board. Next challenge, I am going to get my own stickers. Maybe something unique.. now that I have discovered an aisle full of stickers at Michaels! 

It is not over till it is over.. still have 16 to go... hopefully I will finish it, ill winds or otherwise.

Yoga challenges

The summer 60 day challenge is wrapping up at Bikram Yoga San Jose. This time I did not sign up to do the challenge. There was travel involved and the family clearly declared that there will be no room for doubles to compensate. I was still hoping that maybe some things will rearrange themselves with some divine providence and maybe a chance will open up to finish.

No such luck. It should have been 48/60. Did not even make that. 42/60 was the final class count. That was thanks to the eye infection that was picked up on the last trip. Have recovered the eyes nicely, but going to travel again. Just have to be conscious and not touch my eyes after touching any of the trays or windows on dirty planes. 

The only good thing was that my MIL was here the last two months and she came to yoga with me. It is always great to have a yoga buddy!

Thanks to my co-sister, MIL and me got a new T-shirt. She saw this in India and it was nice of her to send us these shirts. Love the shirt!

Challenge or not, my goal for the year is >200 classes.. Have 165 for the year and given my future travel schedule, will need to go every day when in town..

It is still a great feeling to cheer my yoga buddies and see them finish. Encouraging people to take this on and see them succeed is giving me as much happiness as finishing it myself. That also is progress in a way!

Don't you have Yoga to do?

That is a question that my wife and kids ask me these days, especially when my responses to their questions are 

- questions 

- have nothing to do with the question

- general answers in a raised voice that don't add any value

I do occasionally answer their questions when there is a lot on my mind, but most of the time my mind is simply not tuned to what is being asked.

This year has been particularly off to a bad start with us getting hit with unplanned spends almost every week.. a broken washer to start off on New Years eve, a rat/squirrel deciding to nest inside the Prius hood, India trips, locked up knees and jaw which came out of nowhere, water main leak bills that hit us months later, a change in deduction rules from IRS which makes us cut checks to them.. the list keeps going.. 

This year has also been tough on the mind with my father taking a fall and the constant worry that he might fall again and the impact this has on my mom, Jr. having to go to college shortly and me being at odds with the wife and kids on the value of a college education vs. real skill development.. 

Let's just say that I am at war with the world.. 

So it is no wonder that my wife and kids would rather see me pack off and go do Yoga, because at least for a few hours I am calm and not belligerent after coming back. The yoga literally knocks the wind out of me and in trying to get my bearings back, I tend to look forward instead of in the rear view mirror. I am able to do that at work but not at home. At work, can always tell myself and folks "let's focus on what has to be done next". There comes a point in your life where your willingness to solve some issues is simply not there because you don't see the value in solving those issues. I maybe at that point now!

This year I signed up for a 60 day challenge with the goal of getting some sanity. It was the one word I put in as the reason for signing up. Having signed up 8 times before and finishing 7/8 times, was not really going for the physical benefit this time. Just wanted to lower my rage. 

There was going to be travel during the challenge and that meant doing some doubles, but that was a known thing and by now it is nothing new for me or the family. However, I stopped drinking water during class last March 21st. Wanted to make that the new normal. So that made some of the doubles incredibly hard, but I did it. Drank a packet of vitamins 15 minutes after class and walked right back into the hot room and did everything.. gave it my 100%. Most of the times, I went on will power alone. Literally willed my body to stand up and do the asanas. 

The main goal of not drinking water was to be able to fidget less in class, what with having less distraction from the water bottle and also to be able to suck my tummy in during forward compressions.  The no water practice definitely helped with the tummy "tuckability" in a significant way.  However, in the 222 classes since no water, the number of times I have NOT fidgeted or tried to unintentionally wipe sweat off my forehead or nose, try to unwrinkle my towel, etc. is ZERO!  Have managed to stay absolutely still for the standing series most of the times but that is only two thirds of the class.

It becomes especially hard when we are lying down on the floor trying to relax. It is one thing to let the body relax.. it is another thing to let the mind wander while the body is trying to relax.. that is when you fidget and by the time you realize it, it is too late.. fidgeting already done.. mission failure! 

At first it used to depress me that I had no control over my own body parts. How could my hand go to my forehead the second I take my mind off of the "no fidget no fidget" mantra? We call it "sub-conscious" for a reason! The trick is to be conscious of every thing for 90 minutes. It is NOT easy. In that challenge I failed miserably.  

One has to take the positives when you get them. From that perspective, I did manage to do Yoga 60 times in 60 days, thanks to all the encouragement from family, friends and most importantly my teachers. That is the big positive. For all the seething internal negativity and rage, there are people out there who care about me, realize that most of my screw ups are well intentioned and calm me down. We have a healthy support group and a great community at BYSJ. We don't talk about our individual problems, work etc.. we do talk about attitudes, approach to things.. be it in the hot room or how to translate that to the outside world and that helps. We talk to each other and get inspired. 

Folks with fused spines, amputees, folks who see their patients die on a regular basis, folks who have to inject themselves every day to just be able to function, folks with PTSD... a long list of people who come and do the yoga to keep them moving and functioning..

Compared to them, my flying across the pacific every three weeks and going over jetlag or fighting joint locking up issues seems lame. 

The usual graphs and charts that I post to remind myself that every year is different but I can still go after finishing 10 challenges..

My average weight has gone from 149 to 152 this year.. but it ahs been going up from 139 steadily over last 6 years at 2 lbs/ year. Guess that is on the trend line. This is the weight graph ever since I started tracking it.  

 

Made new friends this year. Most of the times I went for the last class of the day. We managed to encourage and push each other to finish!

The best part was the party where we got to share our stories and have family and friends present to get our T-shirts. It is a shirt that I wear with pride everywhere, not just because of the soft fabric, but because it was earned with a lot of hard work!

There is a warmth in that hot room (no pun intended) that makes me feel like I am inside my mothers womb (guess at least that is what it would feel like). It is a place of safety where I am at peace. The teachers voices are always a calming influence, even when they are imploring us to push ourselves in their loudest voices! My mind reacts "that is so soothing",  kind of like how after almost 20 years my wife looks cute even when she is yelling at me. Thank you BYSJ for keeping me healthy inspite of my repeated attempts to screw up my body and more importantly for keeping me sane!

The challenge is done but San and the kids keep encouraging me to do Yoga. All credit for anything I do, goes to them... but the T-shirt goes to me! 

Don't die like a Zebra...

No.. not about wildlife.. it is just another Yoga post.

Wrote this post last year almost around the same time.. this week we almost had a repeat of sorts.. 

Given the US changes time for Daylight savings and my compadres in Asia don't, I get to do yoga on Tuesdays only after 8PM between November and April, if at all. Given the Yoga studio has teachers who are also creatures of habit, knew it would be one of two guys teaching that class. 

Last week being Chinese New Year, I got to go to a 6:30 PM class and planned to do a double. As usual I didn't check the schedule and the Lioness showed up..

When signing in at the lobby she asks me "Did you know I was going to teach? Surprise ?!"  

If you just visualizd a smiling woman saying "surpise",  United airlines air hostess style  .. visualize Samuel Jackson walking out from a door with a gun saying "surprise !#$^&**&^%$!!!" instead. She said it the former way, I reacted as though I had seen the later..

The probability of doing a double halved instantly.

The class itself was interesting.. Heckling was apparently allowed in that class, but for some reason, I did not get the memo. The entire class was put on notice that she was compared to a lioness, but they did not get the context. 

Little did they know, that what was more important was that they were Zebras... or Gazelles.. As long as everyone was doing the pose in unison, things were okay. The minute one person went out of formation, they were going to get picked on. They were dead.. 

There were a lot of facts thrown into the class.. like the length of a human colon being five feet. We even got the dialogue in Spanish for a few mintues.. I have heard the dialogue in Japanese once and Russian once.. and they didn't make a difference. You know what you are supposed to do in the sequence, and as long as the teachers voice modulation is right, push sounds like push in any language and relax or change sounds like an exit strategy in any language.. 

I did not do the double after that killer class and postponed it for the next day. 

It has been an interesting week at work and home with meetings that go late, calls that make it difficult to juggle yoga. We had a guest teacher the next day. A popular teacher who is like a pied piper for yogis. Have been in his class before a few years ago. He has been gifted with an amazing hypnotizing voice and he puts it to good use. You go into a trance and do things you would not normally do. Every now and then you look in the mirror and go "is that really me doing that stuff?".  

Between the Lioness and the Pied piper, the doubles were getting postponed almost on a day to day basis. I desperately needed to cheer myself up to go do that double to get me back on track for the sixty day challenge. 

This year, I had not planned on putting stickers after every class. It was going to be a silent challenge. I had a good 20 minutes between the classes. So I pulled up a stool and sat in front of the challenge board and decorated with the stickers. After slowly sticking a good 37 stickers, felt really good. 

Admired my handiwork for a few minutes and spoke to some of my challenge buddies. They were laughing at my decorations. Walked back into the hot room and did the second class and did justice to that class as well. My friend who knew I was doing a double taught that class. He gave us serial instructions with a short pause after each instruction. Given my brain had limited processing ability, it was great to do it one step at a time! After class I told him and he goes "you have a small RAM?". Given my job is to give people more RAM.. that was funny!

Two thirds of the way into the challenge this time. As long as I don't pick up germs on travel, there is a good chance I will finish.

This year started on a bad note.. and the first three weeks were going from bad to worse to the point where I was just hoping Feb would be a better month than Jan, on a personal and professional side.  So far the last ten days have been better than the first 30 for the year.

The very first class this year started with my teacher saying "Intention is better than resolution guys. If most of you are here on Jan 1st because of a new year resolution, change that to intention. If you have intention, you will get there sooner or later. It is a lot better than a resolution". A few days later, picked out an Angel card at the lobby and it was "intention". That was some coincidence. 

Last year was brotherhood and sisterhood..

Definitely have set an intention for this year.. will get to where I have to eventually..

A golfing angel is far from the intention I have in mind.. but time will tell. 

The yoga journey continues to be interesting. My teachers make it interesting. They push me and I let them push me because I have implicit faith in them. They are my real angels watching over me.. quite literally from the podium. My friends and yoga buddies make it fun. The hi fives, the fist bumps, the words of encouragement keep me motivated. The family is also arranging schedules around to make sure I get yoga done, even if it is late in the night or twice a day over weekends. 

There are always ups and downs, but I feel blessed to be surrounded by folks who wish me well.