Hot Yoga Friday

What a day, yesterday. I got up super early yesterday so that I could get to work early. I was going to my first hot yoga (bikram) class and I needed to adjust ny schedule a little. More on that later. I woke up pretty hungry, my stomach was growling even as I was getting ready. I finally calmed it down with a bowl of hot grain cereal (that i finally got our of the freezer), it has wheatberries, oats and bulgur. I mixed in some ground flax seed and topped it with a banana and some almond butter.

TGIBreakfast time

At work, the day started with a bang. One of the projects I have been working on is our new website and yesterday we went live. I was running around all morning long changing everyone’s email settings to they would get their email. I even went to the maintenance department twice which would make a total of 3 times the entire year I have worked there. I wonder if the maintenance department of other world class golf course require rubber gloves to touch anything? But I digress.

By the time I made it back to my desk it was almost noon and I was ravenous. I barely had time to even have some water which was worrying be because of the hot yoga class. I decided that I would have all natural peanut butter on a whole wheat wrap when The Chef and T talked me into the the member lunch special. T even gave me a little bite of hers to help me decide. The member special was a sirloin tip salad with balsamic reduction topped with feta cheese. I wasn’t really in the mood for beef but I was still pretty tasty. I hope the picture is OK but there was someone in my office when it came and I felt kind odd about taking a picture so I did it really fast and only took one. I guess that as my time with this blog goes, I will get over that.

beef...it is whats for lunch

After lunch, I had a few sips of my cinnamon latte I made at home but it wasn’t really doing anything for me so I put it away. The rest of the afternoon was hectic. I have major deadlines on Fridays and because my morning was busy being the resident IT guru, I hadn’t had time to do any of my “real” work. It seemed like the clock was moving faster than I could work. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing and the fellow staff had a number of questions about the new email/website. It was an intense day and when it was over, I was literally running out the door 10 minutes later than I wanted. I was worried about not making it in time for the hot yoga class.

The Prius didn’t let me down. I put the pedal to the metal and made it there in time. My friend Jessy had told me that if I could get there in time to lay on my mat before the class started that it would help me acclimate to the hot tempature of the room. I got there about 20 minutes before class started and was able to fill out the paperwork and get changed. When I walked in the teacher said “This must be your first time” and I meekly said yes, she told me that I looked scared. I was sure I did because I was. I quickly changed and quietly put my mat down in the back of the room as instructed. It was hot in there! And for some reason, when I walked it in it shocked me as if I hadn’t been expecting it. First I laid down, sat up, laid, sat up. I couldn’t figure out what to do. Some people were in child’s pose, one girl was hanging out in downward facing and other were just sitting quietly.

At promptly 4:30, the teacher walked in, clapped her hands and said “Everyone up” and like little soldiers we all stood. The class began with some breathing exercise and sweat was already dripping down my face into my eyes. I knew I was sweating, obviously but it really dawned on me how much when we put our arms towards the ceiling the first time and I could see sweat pouring in little streams down my arms. Then in our first forward fold I saw sweat popping out of the pores of my legs. I had never seen sweat like that.

The class continuted and I was doing pretty good. A few times my brain was asking me what the hell I was doing there but I resisted the urge to flee. I didn’t feel and dizziness or nausea until AFTER the water break which I found to be really odd. A couple times I had to just stand while the others were in the poses and even a couple times I had to sit all the way down. Some of the poses felt easy and some of them felt really hard. I noticed towards the end of the class that bending forward was really getting the dizziness and nausea going so I was really gentle with myself. I wasn’t able to go as far as in a normal class on some things but was able to go farther in others. It was really an odd yoga experience.

Right on the dot at 6pm the class ended, she told us the lay as long as we needed to. I tried to stay still and just lay but I was really ready to go. I probably only stayed a minute or so. On the way home, I had some odd sensations in my head. My jaw felt really tight and I felt I was kind of unable to focus. I wonder if I should haved stayed a little longer. I also wonder if I was clinching my jaw during class.

I arrived home to find that dear husband had made us lovely salads for dinner. It was spring mix, cukes, almonds, dried cranberries and crumbled goat cheese. Which was awesome,  I had really been craving goat cheese lately from reading Jenna’s blog the past few days. I heated up some Sister Shubert’s whole wheat yeast rolls to go on the side, topped the salads with some oil and vinegar and dinner was ready. It was delicious! The odd thing was that I wasn’t really hungry even though it had been about 7.5 hours since I had last eaten. I blame that on the hot yoga because lunch was pretty light and I had avoided eating before class because that can increase nausea.

another salad

After dinner, I delved into my book again. I am reading How to Survive your diet by Linda Moran. It is a pretty interseting book about not dieting, which of course is what I am doing. I keep falling asleep while reading it so though it is a very short book, I haven’t even read half of it. So, in true form, I fell asleep while reading. I was had wondered if the hot yoga was going to keep me up but I was actually really relaxed and I had a great night’s sleep. I’ll be doing that again.