Grasping at pearls with my fingertips.

Here I talked about how I was starting a full week of yoga.

I have finished that full week and am in love with Hot yoga.

This studio isn't as hot as some Hot yoga, but it is still nice and warm and I sweat like a beast.

This is how the week went:

Day 1 (monday): I went to Hatha yoga in the evening. It was not a Hot class

Day 2 (tuesday): a bit sore from Hatha, but not too bad. Went to Hot yoga in the evening

Day 3 (wednesday): so sore I could hardly walk, seriously considered bailing out on yoga in the evening (there is a good chance that if I had bailed I would never have gone back), but I decided to push through. Went to Hot yoga in the evening.

Day 4 (thursday): way less sore than the day before, I felt awesome. I was stoked on life and on yoga. Went to Hot yoga in the evening.

Day 5 (friday): even less sore, felt even more awesome. Looked forward to yoga all day. Went to Hot yoga in the evening.

Day 6 (saturday): woke up early (9am is what I consider early on a saturday) in order to go to Hot yoga at 10:30am. The fact that I would wake up this early proves my growing love for yoga. I could see this saturday morning deal becoming a routine, it was actually nice to get up at a reasonable hour and do some yoga to start the day. Felt awesome for the rest of the day.

Day 7 (sunday): woke up at 10:30am to play basketball at 11am with some professors at the University. Then went to Hot yoga at 2pm. Now I am at home studying, and I feel awesome.

After only a week, I have noticed what I think are huge improvements. Not only do I no longer look like a complete douche trying to follow the flow of the movements but I have seen big improvements in my flexibility. I am normally a relatively flexible person, I have always been able to touch my toes and whatnot. But now I am bending right in half. It's crazy. Some of the postures are quite hard and I am getting stronger.

Yoga is super non-competitive. If you know me, you know that I am a crazy competitive person, so this was a bit different for me. It is all about personal gains. I am used to comparing myself to everyone around me. Take rock climbing, I am all about the comparison. Can I climb a higher grade than that person? Can I do more pull-ups than them? Can I do a harder bouldering route? But in yoga I have been forced to just compare to myself. How far can I go compared to yesterday, or last week? I think yoga will be good for me. Maybe help me get a handle on my pride (I feel like the need to compare myself to others and only feel good when I am doing better than someone else stems from a deeply imbedded pride issue).

The point of all this is that I am very glad that I tried Hot yoga out. I will be buying another week long pass for this coming week. That will take me until I go home for Christmas. Then I am planning to do yoga all next semester. Probably not everyday, maybe at first to get back into it. I think at least 3 days a week though. The studio I go to has a 21 day yoga challenge. I am thinking of trying it in the new year. Basically, you have to do yoga at least 6 days a week for 3 weeks. If you do, you get all that yoga for $60 (the one day drop in price is $15, so that is a wicked deal). But if you miss more than one day a week, the challenge is over. If you want to keep going/try again you have to pay $60 again.

I also went off sugar for a week. At first it really sucked, but now I have stopped craving sugar. I am going to try to really control my sugar intake over the holidays.

I have deleted my facebook for exam week. I am too easily distracted when I don't want to study. But I have to study, so bye bye facebook. Not that facebook is the only thing that distracts me, far from it, but it is one distraction that I can remove. Perhaps I will start blogging incessantly with facebook gone.