Another year of yoga

2014 saw me do three (or two depending on who you ask) things

1. Travel a lot for work and figure out ways to cope with that schedule wise

2. Do yoga whenever possible while home and figure out ways to adjust that into the schedule

3. Do the usual things at home when possible (San would give me a D- for that this year.. the kids might give me a B- given they are partial to me)

Travel for work is not a topic for this blog till I start my next gig whenever that might be. The usual things at home do get a blog post or two with a lot less frequency.. that leaves Yoga!

This is an engineer trying to summarize yoga stats. So this post has to have some graphs and charts!

As usual the goal was to try and do Bikram Yoga at least 200 times this calendar year and yet again, I fell short of that goal. Yoga is a process and one gets the benefit as long as one tries in all sincerity. So from that standpoint, will give myself an A+

Can honestly tell myself that I went to the Yoga room at every possible opportunity this year. Given my travel days, the 50% attendance this year is like a 80+ % attendance. It was better than last year.. (just realized that the graph for last year was overwritten by mistake).

For those math geeks, the reason for the double lines is that on some days I did two classes and that messes up the graph.. 

This year it was 181 classes since Jan 5th.  Last year it was 194.. Next year.. again the goal is to go 200 times.. It may be time to find hotels close to Bikram Yoga studios in my travel locations. 

Now for the weight tracking..

Started off flat. After the India trip the weight that was added on seems to have stayed permanently! Either that or the weighing machine had some midway calibration issue when we came back from India and we replaced the battery. It is now holding steady at 149+/-1 lbs when last year it was 143+/-1 lbs for the most part. 

Going to keep collecting this data. Someday someone who decides to do research in Bikram Yoga and weight stability might use this data! 

This year, there was one special "posture clinic" class that I got to attend in October. When I walked into the studio that say and saw that there were only five people who had shown up for that special 2 hour class with the head teacher at BYSJ, was expecting to have the class cancelled. Michelle showed up inspite of her busy schedule organizing the California Yoga Championship and spent more than the alloted 2 hours teaching the five of us little things to remember that improved our postures. 

Something she said that day stuck with me. She said "look at yourself in the mirror. You might not like everything you see there. Some of you look conflicted all the time. It is time to let go of things that you don't like and improve on the things you like when you stare at yourself!"

Today I went for the last class of 2014. Looked at myself in the mirror and saw two people. There is a nice do-gooder spiritual guy on the one side fighting a vice presidential asshole on the other. One of them has to go or a better compromise has to be reached. 

There is also the guy who is happy to just be in the room giving his 110% who has to reconcile with the guy who is perpetually unhappy with falling down, losing the breath or have a symetry mismatch.

Sharing two pictures taken by Jr. this year. (It is good to take pictures of yourself every now and then to see little details)

This is my favorite pose. It takes me all my will power to do this pose knowing that within a few seconds we are all going to be flat on the floor. Can only raise by body clear off my right toe. On the left toe, it is not perceptible. 

The other pose that has frustrated me this year is the Camel pose. Have fallen forward and almost hit the ground more than 10 times this year. Something has to be fixed somewhere. 

Jr. snapped three photos of me doing Camel pose from three different angles. This is a collage of those three shots. The symmetry is off. Something that you cannot realize while doing the pose because you think you are doing it right when reality is far off..

The good thing is that there is no deadline to get any of this to perfection as it is a moving target. It is a "process" and "eventually" this body will find the right balance. 

My FIL asked me last week "Sundar, you are going on all these hikes. Has the yoga helped make things easier? Are you feeling younger?"

My sincere answer was "I am growing older and my body is dealing with that. Yoga is maintaining a status quo! It is not helping me get younger.. but it is helping me not feel older. It is relative!"

Not saying this will work for everyone or this is easy. It has worked and continues to work for me. Maybe it is a good match for my personality and somehow improving on the same routine day after day is something that I can accept as a challenge while others cannot. Maybe the SPC charting guy in me with a manufacturing quality mindset is a perfect match for Bikram Yoga. It is possible.. 

but work, it did! 

Thankful that there is a Yoga studio within 10 minutes from home which stays true to the original Bikram Yoga where a guy like me can still get continued encouragement from teachers and fellow students!

Here's to 2015 and the continuation of the "process"!

Wishing all of you a wonderful 2015. May the next year bring you all that you desire that you know in your heart is actually good for you!

A time that was

Almost two decades ago, yours truly could dance in a competiton from 8AM to 6PM and still go for the formal "social events" that went till midnight. 

It was the best of times and that was it. Then life took a different turn and the dance floor was something that was frequented only in dreams or while day dreaming and choreographing moves for some nice song on the radio. 

Recently, after a long time.. switched on the radio and listened to a few songs. One of them happened to be Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. Loved the song and it brought back so many memories of NSYNC and a group of us dancing to some of those songs that were remixed to select dance beats. 

A thought triggered another and an attempt was made to check out the ballroom clothes that have been packed up since 1999! They did not fit. It was a clear image of a square peg in a round hole when I looked in the mirror. 

So I started focussing on select poses in the hot yoga room that were good to get rid of the handles at the waist. Bikram Choudury's book had details on what pose does what and it was a handy guide. After three months I tried the clothes again two weeks ago and voila!

It is still tight around the lower ribs now, but not bad eh?

Feels good to be able to fit into pants that were stitched in 1996! 

San of course is just shaking her head and so are the kids. Now the next step is to put on some weight in the face without putting the weight back on in the hips. Must be a pose for that! 

ps. Mommy, not to worry! There are no plans to get back on the dance floor. Dancer's pose in the yoga room will be it.

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!