Pandoraspace

On total exhaustion and the inner strength to move on

Each Yoga class lasts for an hour and fifteen minutes.  Yoga classes are offered three times a week. Depending on the lessons for that day and on the pace of the teacher, the students could be made to do twenty or more poses in each class.  On the weeks when the classes are devoted to standing poses, I sometimes wonder how I could survive the class with the number of poses we are made to do.

Once in a while, intensive classes are offered.  The last time I joined those intensive classes, I went to class everyday for five straight days.  Those classes lasted two hours per session. During those classes, I was made to do new poses.  That time was also hell week for me at work.   I would work until 5:30 p.m., attend Yoga class from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., go back to work after, work until 2:00 p.m., go home and be back at work by 9:00 a.m. the next day.

On the forth day of Yoga class, I was so exhausted.  About fifteen minutes into the class, my legs were shaking, and five minutes later, my mind was blank.  I told Rina I was tired and she let me hang from the wall.  While hanging gave me a reprieve from the class, I had a problem getting down.  I felt immobile as my brain could not command my legs to push the wall back and get off the ropes.  Someone else had to help me get down.  At a certain point during the class, I just stared at my classmates who were doing some poses.  Then, at the end of the class when we were “packing-away”, I dropped a chair because my mind went completely blank for the second time.  Worse, I had to go back to work after!  i was never so tired in my life.

So, on the next day, which was also the last day of the intensive program, I went to class thinking that I will probably not last the entire class since went home at 1:30 in the morning, went to work at 9:00 a.m., had a long meeting, ate lunch at 2:30 p.m. and worked until 5:30 p.m. With no expectations whatsoever, I was surprised to learn at the end of the class that this was my best class so far. Not only was I able to do the standing poses (which I do not like) with ease, I was able to balance, stand on my head for a long time and stand on my arms. Wow! Where I got the strength to do many of the poses I find difficult is a mystery to me.

What did I learn from this? In the most unlikely occasion and without expecting to, one surprises oneself by discovering an inner strength that we thought we never had.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 12:08 am and is filed under 'Pinions, Pursuits and Pastimes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.