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! 

The body hackers

It has been hard to do yoga by myself day after day.. but I haven't missed a day this year. Have managed to do a full class with audio recordings from my teachers every day, even if it was the last thing I had to do before going to bed. 

We also have a once a week Zoom live class where our world champion teacher watches us patiently as little thumbnails and still manages to correct us as we are doing the asanas in synchronization with her instructions. 

Today during the live class she said "dont give up" exactly a few milliseconds before I had officially given up going from the left side to right side of a pose. 

The best part is also being able to share things on the group pages and have teachers give me corrections or suggestions on how to improve or go past a set back of sorts. It is kind of like going to a doctor. The better you are able to tell them what is going on in the post, the better the help. You post a photo or video, that is like giving your doctor an x-ray or ultrasound video.. better the help.

For the last few days, I have been trying to improve my practice by taking one pose where we are lying down on the floor and try hold it for 2-3 minutes after finishing the regular class. The reason for this was :

1. doing stuff at home is not same as doing stuff in a hot room at 110 F and 40% humidity. So we cannot push ourselves to the same limits. 

2. at the end of giving it everything at room temp, you are still a lot more flexible at end of class than beginning of class, so it makes sense to stretch at least one pose

3. normally we hold poses for 20 seconds. holding for 2-3 minutes might help me go past limits, relax certain parts better and hold other parts of the body consistently.

What surprised me was that my breathing faltered after 2 minutes on many such attempts even on simple poses. The main reason was my attempt to keep the pose "active" and pulling too much which automatically puts the focus from the breath to the constraint and the whole thing fell apart. 

When I explained this, my teachers gave me very precise instructions on going step by step to handle this. 

Your body is a machine and even though you have had it all your life, it doesn't mean you can put it in certain poses, unless you have a cheat sheet.. there is a step by step method to this madness which will help you get there.. 

Yoga teachers are hackers.. they are body hackers.. they literally have a cheat sheet for how to make your body do things you thought it could never do! 

here are some examples.

disclaimer: these were taken after dinner for show and tell purposes.. based on photographer availability..

I always used to imagine pushing the top surface out and up and towards the mirror in front of me.. that kind of backfires because at the neck area you are conflicted.. the neck has to drop. The idea is actually to push from the back to the front.. imagine the green surface moving up and out and problem solved.. neck still drops. it is easier to imagine things that way. Again what I say may not make sense to you.. as long as one teacher explained it in a way that made sense to me, all is well. 

There is no "code" that can be just downloaded into your head to make you do what the teacher wants and do it right. 

So far my teachers have been very patient with me.. On one of the pre-recorded dialogues my teacher says "it took me 5 years to do what it says in the instruction. It takes however long it takes.. but patience is the key"..

I am testing the patience of my teachers and they are absolutely sweet about handling all the questions. 

Now that I have an extra 30 minutes that is not spent driving to and fro to yoga class, putting that time also towards the yoga. It will hopefully come in handy when the lockdown is lifted and we are able to practice with heat again.

Here's to teachers!

Luke warm Solo Yoga where a group class seems so far far away

Not sure how many Star Wars references I have managed to cram into that blog post title...

This is the dairy entry of a hot yoga junkie:

Day 5 of stay in place : In what was yet another attempt to sweat and sweat a lot, progress was made. Ditched the crammed bathroom and restricted movements. Went back to guest room and set up the space heater to "max". It was still luke warm to say the least. Saw my friend Sid's post on the BYSJ group where he was in his bathroom but had a lot more sweat than me.. that got me thinking.. was it because he was still wearing a shirt? So I decide to wear a fleece jacket to force the sweat.

I did sweat a lot more .. but in the jacket. Finally at the end of class two drops of sweat landed on my mat... normally I have two buckets of sweat after class.. calm down I tell myself. Every deluge has to start with a few drops.. I look at those precious two drops and cry.. make that four drops..

My teachers are posting their dialogues as youtube videos. Only problem is the unreliable internet connection at prime time where things start buffering in the middle of the class. I have started recording these in the middle of the night to save them as audio files only. This way the class can go on uniterrupted.  Only problem is that there is a loud pinging noise in the middle of holding poses.. Found out that this is the outlook incoming mail notification going through the internal microphone. Matt Newman will have to recite the dialogue to an empty room at midnight for me to record this again.. Last night I actually fell asleep while this was recording.. had set an alarm just in case to wake up after 90 minutes to turn off the recording. Who knew Bikram Yoga dialogues make for good lullabies?!

Had no idea that last Sunday's class would be my last group class. Given everything we know about the virus, we would probably have quarantined ourselves a lot earlier. Good thing is all my friends seem to be doing okay and posting their own solo yoga experiences from crammed bathrooms and other spaces. 

Tomorrow will be two years since I stopped drinking water during class. That Mary Jarvis class that changed the water habbit seems ages ago. Last Sunday's yoga class seems ages ago! 

I am a social animal of the huggy type. It is not easy to isolate myself, but it is being done. Have been working on a yoga mat all week. It is surreal to be cooped up in a room all day. I see my kids for maybe 5-10 minutes a day. They are on a different time zone within the house. My MIL is still in her own room and watching TV and chatting with friends. We all go for walks one at a time twice a day around the block. The kids have shown no signs of exercising. Perpetually in their beds. I am thinking of going for a family bike ride tomorrow, weather permitting. Things are changing rapidly.. I am the designated shopper for the family. On Monday I made a Costco run at lunch break and this was the situation..

that was one person out one person in with a limit to how many folks who could be inside costco.. but we were all pretty close to each other.. would not call it social distancing... most of the stuff we needed were out of stock.. we do have a lot of cuties.. eating them on a regular basis to get more vitamin C.. which works for colds but not sure if it helps with the new virus..

There are lessons learned in self control, trying to set up the right environments and most importantly hydrating myself. At work we would all walk around between meetings, take a water break, restroom break. At home the meetings just keep coming one after the other.. you cannot just see who is at their desk to go grab the team for an impromptu meeting.. everything has to be scheduled and that means no breaks. 

The last two days, I took one hour breaks in the middle of the day to drink water and walk around the block. 

The yoga journey continues. Hope we get over the virus soon and get to be in a hot room.. something tells me that this is not going to happen anytime soon... but the community is there and everyone is working on cheering up the others. 

Yoga is a blessing, as are my fellow yogis!