What is in a resolution?

Last years resolution was to go do Bikram Yoga once a day! Within a few days the resolution had been given an amendment that said "exclusing travel days" and that meant the goal went down from 365 already.

The plan was to also document how this resoluton was taking shape over time in hopes of seeing trends. It is very hard to kill my inner nerd! 

There was also something else at stake. Made a deal with Sangeetha that if we paid for a "one year unlimited" pass, will get at least 8$ or less a class to justify the pass. That was the lowest cost on any deal with BYSJ in the previous years when you bought class cards based on number of classes (like a 30 class card or 100 class card). If If I did better than $8/class, it would warrant buying the same thing for 2014!

So between 12/26/12 and 12/26/13 here is what happened..

56% attendance, far from the 100 dream. There were 80 travel days. That still makes it 68% attendane.

The green line shows number of classes without a break. It was great going with the 60 day challenge at the beginning of the year and then it was always a break here or there. 

Looks like that funny graph on exercise patterns that criculated in Facebook, doesn't it? Well most of September and early October was a rout because of the misdiagnosed tooth infection and Jaw locking which ended up pretty badly. Made it a point to get back in the hot room in November all weak after taking powerful antibiotics.  

Also started tracking how many complete poses I sat out in each class because of feeling dizzy, nauseous or for losing my breath or not being able to control my heartrate. There are 26 poses in class. So technically, 26 is like missing an entire class. I had missed the equivalent of almost 6 classes out of the 194 just by sitting out. There are trends within this by teacher, by time of class, by number of people in the room, etc. But that is not going up in the blog.

To say I like all my teachers classes the same, would not be fair. Definitely have my favorites, but this list is not represenative of that. It just reflects times of day I happened to take classes at on certain days of the week.

Somehow the teachers who have themselves gone through some adversity and have used Bikram Yoga to change their lifes appeal to me more than the ones that have been lucky enough to discover Yoga in their teens!

Also recorded my weight after coming home from yoga class. There is definitely a trend there between summer and winter and it will be interesting to see how this goes on continued tracking. Weighed myself only on days of Yoga class and that is why it is not a smooth line. The weight is stable no matter how much I eat and that says a lot about Yoga and "weight control"!

Last but not least, the Sangeetha challenge..

This graph is 950$ / number of classes as the number of classes increased. In other words, if I had been hit by a truck after class 1, it would have been one expensive class!  I got it down to $4.90/class which was way better than the goal of $8/class. 

All is well that ends well or has a new beginning. In this case it is a new beginning. Got the next one year annual unlimited pass started as of today! 

Now if you are wondering if Bikram Yoga made a difference for me in 2013, the answer is an emphatic yes. I had less than 5 sick days in the last year (minus the tooth episode, which could have been fixed with a visit to a good dentist in a day) and inspite of all that travel, managed to keep my sanity and was able to get back on my feet fast. 

There is one complaint from San all the time and that is "If you do Yoga why are you getting angry?". As far as I have checked, there is nothing that says people who do yoga cannot get angry. I can go from zero to angry in 4 seconds, but I can also come back from angry to zero in the same 4 seconds. That is the only difference after doing Yoga and that is a big deal! I am able to go on long hikes with ease and in general my ability to handle difficult situations has not become any worse. So all that credit goes to Yoga.

Wish me luck in bettering last year's attempt!

Difference in Yoga, a shorts does make!

Two weeks ago, just before walking into Bikram Yoga class, was offered a free Yoga shorts, in return for a review of the shorts! 

First off, when you walk into Bikram Yoga class the one obvious disparity anyone can see is in the clothes (or what is left of it) that the women and men wear. The women have perfect fitting, nicely stretching, colorful clothes thanks to an entire industry that caters to the Yoga clothes for the ladies. In spite of this, the women are not necessarily happy.. No matter what their size I do see that the women have much better apparel! 

The men on the other hand come in their underwear for crying out loud, which you cannot even do in the silence of the Yoga room! The options are horrible.

When I first knew that Yoga was going to be a big part of my life (read third yoga class.. I kind of make up my mind fast on these things and they somehow work, like I married Sangeetha 7 days after seeing her and... okay off topic already.. Take 2)

When I first knew that Yoga was going to be a big part of my life, went to the local stores to find suitable shorts. To my dismay there were no "active Yogawear" for men at any of the stores. Only for the ladies! So when an old colleague jokingly asked me "so what do you wear to the yoga class? pink panties?!", I didn't even have a sarcastic answer ready! Then after much searching, found that Dolfin brand swimming shorts did the trick. Over time have bought 5 of the same shorts with reducing waist sizes with blue, green or red bands on the side (the shiny band has earned the name Jigna Jetty from the Little one). To Dolfin's credit, they make swimwear. When you are swimming, there is no squeezing between your legs at any time! So this review does not to say Dolfin is bad. Those shorts are very durable and have gone to hundreds of wash cycles and are still intact!

After all that, I now had a "sample" in my hands!

Was so glad for two reasons. 

1. Someone made an effort to create a yoga shorts for men

2. Someone thought my opinon was worth it! They dared ask for feedback.

Promptly wore it for that class and the first thing that hit me was the fabric. So soft! The next thing that hit me was the way it looked in the mirror! Remember the blouse that old Tamil movie heroines used to wear? There would be a pocket for their nipples?! Think same thing except for the privates. They had created a webbed pocket so the dudes cohones are free and not squeezed.  I got some funny looks from the folks on either side of me, but I told them "I am trying out a free sample for a review".. In short, I had transformed into an underwear model! 

The class was amazing for many reasons. For the first time I was able to move "freely" on the big backbends and the deep forward bends. After 2 1/2 years, locked me knee for the first time doing Padahasthasana.

You are supposed to have "no gap" between your chest and your thighs on this one. The photos here were taken after a yoga class by the budding Yogagrapher aka Little One. Was not warmed up and went into the pose to the best of my ability with two different shorts and asked her to click. I did lock my knee in that class (you can see me almost get there in the new shorts) and it was only because there was no pressure on my privates from the shorts stretching over. No wonder then that the ladies always ace this pose!

Old (above) vs. new (below)! Touching the floor with your head directly at the center of the line between your feet? Easy, when your shorts is not inducing excruciating pain in certain parts! 

I also did not keep fidgeting and pulling my shorts down after every pose. This one did not ride up and down and that made the class more enjoyable.  The shorts also did not feel heavy after being fully soaked in sweat. 

Also saw a marked difference in doing the Eagle pose which is the worst when it comes to pressurizing your groins. 

The funny part was when I came back home and the little one saw me walk in. She kept laughing at my new shorts because of the protuding front pocket! 

All said and done, these folks are on to something. If they can make this pocket "not so obvious" by connecting this to the thigh area, this is the perfect shorts for men! 

Given that

- it is not my problem that my shorts look funny

- that everyone is there in Yoga class for themselves

- other folks are not supposed to distract you (in theory),

wearing this to class every now and then! 

There, my first review of something I never would have dreamt of reviewing! 

Was told that the maker of the shorts is called Indra Wear! 

Watch out, Lulu Lemon!

From Pranayama to Kapalbhati - A nerds eye view

March 5th 2013 was a special day. If my life were to flash past my eyes that day will definitely be on that flashback!

The San Jose Bikram Yoga center had a challenge. Do Yoga 60 times in 60 days. The idea was to come every day. But if you had to miss a day for travel or other reasons, you take a class in that location or do a makeup class the same week. I had originally misinterpreted the Challenge to be 60 days in 10 weeks. That meant one rest day a week. Later found out that it was 60 days 60 classes. No rest day!

Given my once a week trip for work, was doubting my ability to go take up this challenge. With a lot of encouragement from San and the kids as well as my co-workers and the entire BYSJ community, signed up on Jan 5th. March 5th was day 60! March 5th was also class 60!

It was a roller coaster ride where the body and mind went through more than a few challenges. Hot Yoga is not a new thing in this family now. On March 11th, it will be two years since the day MIL and myself attended our very first Bikram Yoga class. Even in our best stretch of 91 days attendance in our first 100 days, we took breaks every now and then. There was the day or two where we said "let's not push it. we can go tomorrow". That determination to go to class when you are slightly sore from an outing with the wife and kids or when you ate dinner at some restaurant with co-workers and it doesn't agree with your stomach or you just drove past Sacramento and back between 6AM and 5PM with one long meeting thrown in and came in to a Yoga class at 6:30 PM so you don't miss a day.. was simply not there in any previous streches of doing Yoga.

When we first started Bikram Yoga, our weight was dropping every day, we were becoming stronger and more flexible, our skin was glowing.. the benefits were visible and measurable and obvious to everyone around us. So just the fact that people around you notice positive changes keeps you going. After you go for a few years, the changes are incremental. Every few weeks or so, you manage to reach a new level in one of the poses or your body and mind work together to realize that you have been interpreting the teachers words slightly off and correct for it. In short, slow and steady progress. Fortunately being a Six Sigma person and having run a Fab, yours truly understands the value of Continuous Improvement and that helps a lot!

It is more of a metal challenge to do 60 classes in 60 days. Once you manage to get up at 4:45, get ready, drive to the Yoga studio, spread that mat and lie down to savor the heat, you realize that you will have a great class.  Making it to the room is the hard part. Doing the Yoga after that is like hot fudge! (Not a big fan of icing on cakes if you can't tell by now).

There were so many days in the last 60 that either tested my physical strength or resolve where San or the kids or most importantly my MIL (who has been coming with me to Yoga class the last 17 days) would say "Don't you dare give up now!" San even let me go to evening class for a lot of days and said "I will take care of both the kids routines. Just go.. and I am letting you do this only because you are doing the challenge and you have come so far!" and I accepted her offer with tears in my eyes. The challenge did some funny stuff to the head too and I would get all emotional and weepy, especially between day 45 to 60!

The challenge was also well documented in Excel to see if the stats would tell me something or let me share anything with the rest of the world. . .

First things first. If you do take a challenge like this, it might not be a bad idea to take two classes on weekends in same day just to compensate for future misses..

If that strategy had not been adopted, it would have been a good reason for the mind to say "no way to catch up now.. so drop it!"

There was a self imposed goal to track how the classes actually went, just to see if the energy level stayed flat, increased, decreased, tracked the lunar cycle.. just wanted to see what the data showed, especially after hearing from other folks who said that one starts sitting down for a lot of poses towards the middle of the challenge.

Now for the weight tracking. It was more of an afterthought to track weight on a daily basis. One thing I learned over this weighing process is that when you drink two 500mL bottles of water within an hour after you finish class, that is 2.2 lbs. Started to measure exactly an hour after class and that showed good tasty food does correlate to a baseline weight change!

When you track stuff and enter a few things every day on a spreadsheet before going to bed, you can actually have some fun trying to stare at the data..

There was a stretch where the classes in general were intense and there was one weekend where a 10 year anniversary class had a record 100+ people in the room. It was more of a communal event than a class and I did push myself way past my limits and that correlated to the low weight and the 4 missed poses the next day. Other than that there are many factors that are not charted that could be reasons for the red bars.. One good thing? Managed to do the 60 classes without missing more than 26 poses.

Even tracked the count by teacher. The list was 20 strong and the count ranged from 6 to 1. Do have favorites within the 30+ teachers and my favorites are different from the MIL's favorites. MIL and me classify teachers into three groups. The fire breathing dragons who push you past your limits just with their voice, the horsewhisperers who get you into a trance and make you do what they say and teachers who are a combination of both. They push you during the pose and calm you down with their voice when you are in relax mode.  While I love the dragons, the MIL prefers the horsewhisperers. Maybe it is an age or personality thing.. End of the day, have a lot of teachers to thank, for encouraging and watching out for what I do in class and giving me suggestions to improve my practice!

When we ask a lot of folks we meet regularly after class "Did you sign up for the challenge?" the answer is "No. I come 2-3 times a week regularly anyways. So don't see any reason to do this 60 day thing!".  I used to go a lot more "regularly" and still, this was a great eye opener. If you are doing Bikram Yoga and your studio has a 60 day challenge, TAKE IT! Why?

1. There are a lot of poses that I was stuck at with a certain level or step. Have managed to get past those points during this challenge. Do not know if it has something to do with the ability to form muscle memory when you go without a break of more than a day, but the end result is obvious. Maybe you will get past those sticky points.

2. It is not easy to prioritize Yoga over other things. Need a high level of dedication to go pull it off and you get to test your ability to do a good thing for yourself above other things. Kind of makes you realize that the most important thing in your life, is "your life"!

3. Your whole family might cheer for you and support you. San, the kids and the MIL who joined me for the last 15 classes.. which was the most difficult streach, supported me like never before! They have also never openly said "I am proud of you" under any circumstance in recent times and hearing them say that was worth the effort.

4. Finally, you realize that you can actually pull it off and it was not an unrealistic goal as you originally thought! Realizing you are made of tougher stuff (mentally and physically) than you thought is a great reward in itself.

Then again, if you are a nerd you might also have some fun staring at Yoga graphs for a change...

ps. Will post pictures next week of the new and improved Shaolin monk looking me..

A year of Yoga...

It was this week, last year that the MIL and myself entered the Bikram Yoga studio in San Jose to sign up for a "10 days for $20" trial deal.

The logic?

We either survive the first 10 days in which case we continue or we spent 20 bucks to find out that this stuff is not for us!

5 days in and we were hooked for not one or two, but a whole host of reasons to the point where we were thinking "Why did we not try this before?"

A year has rolled by and

- I weigh close to 140 lbs now. A weight that was last recorded in early 2002 when I was still exercising, could do a Cha-Cha-Cha on a dance floor with effortless ease and had a stomach like a wolf! Cutting back from 157 lbs, this is a welcome change.

- Have had 4 sick days in the last year since starting Yoga. Mostly due to extraneous causes like inhaling strong chemicals, getting things stuck in my teeth etc.. The body's resistance to germs that the kids or sick co-workers bring has improved significantly. There were almost a dozen sickness events per year in the previous 6 years (specially since the little one was born)

- My ability to stay calm at work in situations where yours truly used to turn red in the ears and openly express instant displeasure at the state of affairs and earned a nickname "The General" has also improved significantly. Can control my head much better these days. Can be the voice of reason and calm now. Also listen more and talk less. Something that every manager has to work hard to do.. which happens to be a side effect of doing yoga. That is a "Win Win", no?!

Last but not least, wife has a "headache" and that means no hanky panky? No big deal. Go sit in the lotus pose, meditate and sleep like a baby! This used to bother me as well, but not anymore. There is a willingness in the head, across the day, to work with the cards you are dealt with and make the most of it.

The kids came to the "Kids Yoga Class" yesterday and Jr. did very well. The little one just lay on the mat and watched others for the last half hour but given her age and attention span, it will take some time for her to get used to this (don't want to force anything on an opinionated girl!). Today both of them were more than wiling to click a few pictures of me doing poses from the floor series.

So.. here they are..

San refuses to acknowledge the six pack in "Six Pack Sundar" but the kids definitely do.

Jr. even knew what a six pack was (apparently "The dairy of a Wimpy Kid" book has a chapter where kids draw six packs on their abdomens with their mother's mascara!) and said "Yes, I can see it!"..

Thanks to Bikram Choudhury, Michelle Vennard and BYSJ! You have given me quite a comeback!

The Yoga journey continues!

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