Hotel Room Yoga

Oh my gosh, after 10 days away from the hot room, I was going insane... back unhappy, skin unhappy, hair unhappy, tummy unhappy, mind unhappy. Paired with days packed full of trainings, project work, more work during "breaks", and business dinners, I felt like crap.

Time for Hotel Room Yoga. I set up some towels and tried to practice in front of the mirror which was not well positioned at all... and of course the heat was missing... oh well, I made it work.

After 90 minutes of Bikram's voice from my iPhone, I was feeling happy and healthy again. Yay!

(You can buy Vol1 Standing & Vol2 Floor Series here or on iTunes. You will get a complete 90 min class given by Bikram Choudhury himself!)

(The Magic of) Practicing on Consecutive Days

In the first half year of my Bikram Yoga practice, I tried to keep an "every-other-day" schedule, for example taking a class on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. I figured, since I cannot come every day, this would be the next best thing.

Along came my first 30 Day Challenge, and after that a few months during which I struggled to keep a regular schedule. Somewhere during those months, I came to a conclusion: practicing every other day is not a great plan and certainly not "the next best thing" to practicing every day.

For some reason (or probably multiple reasons), practicing on consecutive days is so much more worthwhile. The classes seem easier (by no means easy though), the postures get prettier, and most importantly, the health benefits are greater.

-- Awesome! Now how do I do it? Ideally, I want to take class three days in a row, then take a 1-2 day break. Yeah, that is still a huge time commitment, but as everything in life, fitting class into my schedule has gotten easier with practice. It's still never easy (just like class), and so December & January so far have not looked too good.

I love looking at November for inspiration though (in my favorite App "Calendar Tracker Lite"):

Awww, I want to practice like this every month ♥

Here's to hoping I'll have a few months like this in 2012!

This is how I roll

I've mentioned it a couple of times... work is kinda crazy at the moment. I don't know when I have to work the next day and where. I'm just kind of on stand-by and the 60-hr week last week didn't help either... blah.

Anyway, this is the result of my vagabond lifestyle...

Why yes, I do have a laptop, a case of water bottles, an oscilloscope, yoga clothes and yoga towel, random food items, dress shoes, and more electronic measuring equipment in my trunk. Doesn't everybody?

Two yoga mats and yoga clothes drying on my improvised drying rack. When I go to yoga and then
straight to a customer, I hang up my wet, sweaty clothes on the hangers... not ideal, but better than having them rot in a bag in my car for 10 hours.

Yep, just trying to make it work...


PS: I'm trying my new blogging app for the first time. Hope this post doesn't look wonky.

Love this App!

Just a quick shout out to one of my favorite apps on my iphone... Tracker Lite!

I use it to mark off the days on which I've taken a Bikram Yoga class. It was especially useful/uplifting during my first 30 Day Challenge in March. Actually, even now during non-challenge time, I just LOVE ticking off another day in my calender after I've dragged my butt to gracefully finished a yoga class, YAY :)

Here's the screenshot from this past month... I'm happy with how often I've made it into the hot room, considering I'm busy busy enjoying summer and all that it entails this year :)

Namaste.

PS: Total number of  Bikram classes attended since starting eleven months ago... 141... yeaaaah :)