After 4 weeks of a fitness boot camp, I was ready for a more relaxing form of exercise. I say relaxing, but let me tell you, hot yoga requires muscle, balance and a great core. I thought I had a great core and had no idea how challenging this hot yoga stuff really is. I took a class across town and absolutely loved the teacher. I left the hour long 100 degree classroom sobbing uncontrollably and ready for another class later that day. I felt a sense of release and a sense of belonging.
These classes begin with some basic warm up like a sun salutation which for those of you who don't know is a series of roughly 8 moves that flow together like a sort of dancing burpee. After about 10 minutes, it starts to get super hot and I started sweating like crazy! I personally found this to be extremely comfortable and soothing. After 40 more minutes of trying to follow along, we ended with corpse pose, which is exactly what you might imagine. Lying flat on our backs with our palms facing up trying to regain our normal rhythm of breathing coupled with a complete sense of relaxation. This last 10 minutes is used as a meditation to calm the mind body and spirit, which is when I felt the release - a release of my own perfectionism, my own judgement of self, my negative thoughts of self and replaced it with completeness & acceptance.
Later in the week, I signed up with San Clemente Hot Yoga, which offers unlimited yoga for $69 per month. I was still doing boot camp at the time so I couldn't fit in as much yoga as I would have liked. As soon as the boot camp ended, the yoga studio began a 21 day challenge. I hung in for the first 7 days and enjoyed the routine, enjoyed the heat and have started to become more flexible. Oh, and my intention was to simply improve my posture, which has improved tremendously.
Each week, I log onto see the calendar for the coming week and schedule my classes accordingly. I skipped yesterday after my honesty revealed I was doing the challenge for the wrong reason. Today begins week 2 and honestly, I'm looking forward to it.
