Oct. 8th

Tribute to the Hot Room:
Breathing. The most natural & essential action in life.
There are few places I'm more aware of my breathing than in the hot room for yoga.
I love this room. I love it because the moment I step inside I feel at home. It's like summer in Texas. I've been practicing Bikram yoga off & on for over 8 years. In Austin, one studio just left all the doors open to the parking lot because it was 105 degrees outside. It's the standard to which I measure my level of fitness.

Tonight, I stepped back inside the hot room after a couple months break and the rest of my world faded away. I needed everything else to fade away. Even if only for 90 minutes, I did not have to think about the play that didn't get produced this fall or the national commercial job that was just cancelled or the dream job I've been chasing that rejected me or probably the most painful, my sweet, amazing dog, Toby, who will no longer be waiting to race me up the driveway when I visit home. All the hurt that threatens to surface if I give it a moment of attention, I swallow.  Like most people, we have jobs/people/life that count on us to be functioning human beings so we ignore them, smile, and tell everyone we're "great".

BUT the thing about pain/disappointment/anger/heartache or just emotions in general, our bodies store them. I'm not getting hippy-dippy about this, it's true. The magic of the hot room, what I love about the hot room, is that concentrating on breathing and trying to make teeny-tiny adjustments in each posture, this intense focus on my body allows the emotion to process right on out. I just have to breathe through it.

If anyone knows anything about this type of yoga or has suffered thru a class, you know one of the last postures is camel (the true name is something I cannot spell or pronounce). I dread this posture almost always. It's a deep back bend that opens up the whole front side of your body. Tonight, I wanted to live in this pose. This may never happen again, which is why I feel I must document this cause it's a tribute to the idea that if you works at something, even for 8 years, there are still things that will surprise you and incredible freedom & strength gained in those moments.
At the end of class, during our final savasana, I stayed on my mat, soaked in sweat, and ignored my impulse to pop up and get back to the dozens of responsibilities that were waiting for me outside that room. I just let my belly rise, let my belly fall. Breathing.