Contrasting Saturdays

 I just caught myself feeling a bit smug because I solved Wordle in two this morning, and I intend to set off for my first Saturday morning yoga in a while.

Then I remembered that Jone left Norway on his latest mercy mission to Ukraine yesterday This time he is delivering generators and medical equipment to  Lviv and Kyiv. Started to assemble the kit at the end of last year (Icons passim). Now he has come through and is making good on the pledge he made to himself and the people he is helping.

Sorta puts patting yourself on the back if you have managed to get up early enough in the morning to get to 8:30 yoga in perspective eh?

650

 I went to my 650th yoga class yesterday up. No Ben as he wanted to lie in and catch up on his shut eye after a long week's work followed our West Dean trip last weekend. Come to think of it I have also seen off Donna and Kevin over the years, which is a pity as I am incapable of getting up and out for a 6:30 am weekday class unless I am picking someone up in the car or they are collecting me.

Kevin quit when the bulk of the Bikram classes were reduced to an hour down from 90 minutes. I agree with him. It was a retrograde step but I still think an hour is better than nothing.

Here's the history - https://nickbrowne.coraider.com/search/label/Yoga

We have all the time in the world

I was back to hot yoga for the first time in 2021 yesterday.

It is more than three years (Icons passim) since Shona the instructor reduced me to tears of laughter by solemnly invoking lyrics from Let's get it on by Marvin Gaye into the new age dialogue that accompanies the session.

This Saturday I got her to the same thing with All the Time in the World by Louis Armstrong. Again it was comedy gold. |The morning's class was, to all intents and purposes, a twelve inch, white label remix of 'All the time in the world." Exceeding even my expectations.

500

Eight years and seven months since the first time, I did my 500th yoga class yesterday.

Hot stuff

Almost exactly seven years and eleven months (Icons passim) after my first Bikram yoga session, I took the some and heir along to Hot Yoga Wimbledon this morning so he could try it out for himself.

He did very well, though he was surprised how intense it was, and has signed up for an introductory unlimited thirty day pass. He should be able to give that a thorough pasting as he will be in limbo between GCSEs and college over the next month.

I have been 443 times in total, which makes it rather vexing to see him to things (Fixed Firm pose anyone?) I still can't do in his first class.

Burmese Python Shocked At Amount Of Stress Man Holding In His Neck

HOMESTEAD, FL—Marveling at the amount of tension his prey seemed to be carrying around with him, a 12-foot-long Burmese python was reportedly shocked Wednesday at how much stress a local man was holding in his gradually constricting neck. “Geez, it’s like one huge knot in there,” said the 300-pound reptile, also noting as it coiled itself with increasing force around the man’s torso that his shoulders were “like rocks—just giant lumps of tightness.” “He must be having a tough time at work or something. This can’t be healthy. Seriously, this is the kind of stress that gives you a heart attack at age 40.” At press time, the python expressed relief that the man seemed to have very abruptly become completely relaxed.

I went to my 400th yoga class this morning and suffered throughout with the same tight hips that I had when I started in September 2009 (Icons passim).

I sometimes wonder why I bother, even though I think the actual damage was done yesterday with Ido Portal deep squats.

Ultra spiritual

It was my three hundred and thirty third yoga session this morning, and though, judging by the mirror that always lines the front wall at a Bikram session, I still turn into Red Skull before he first water break I must be improving. For the second week in a row my locust pose was praised and offered as an exemplar by the teacher. When I consider that when I started I couldn't raise my legs at all in it I am rather chuffed.

A year ago, I went straight to the studio after coming back from the Bomber's Old Ruts end of season rugby tour and fell asleep (can't imagine why, I'd only been up boozing for three days) before the lesson even started. I was woken by a stern woman whose blissful egolessness had been disturbed by my snoring.

These days I would have explained to her that ‘prana’ refers to the universal life force and ‘ayama’ means to regulate or lengthen. Prana is the vital energy needed by our physical and subtle layers, without which the body would perish. It is what keeps us alive. Pranayama is the control of prana through the breath. Why you gots to be the hater pouring salt on my game you no-skillz beetch?

abbreviated

Bikram Choudhury is a yoga instructor and the founder of the Bikram yoga method, a wildly popular form of the practice that involves students working through 26 poses in a room that’s heated to 105 degrees. He has also been dogged by allegations of sexual assault and inappropriate conduct for years, with some cases originating at the flashy, self-styled guru’s teacher trainings.

A number of those lawsuits are coming to a head, as the plaintiff in a sixth civil suit alleges that Choudhury raped her during a 2010 training. Another case, regarding a separate alleged rape during a training that same year, is also moving forward, according to The New York Times.

According to my training records I have been to 313 yoga classes since I started. At the moment I get a five sessions a month subscription at Bikram Yoga Wimbledon and generally go at 8 am on Saturday. I stayed in bed and didn't make it last week, and tried and failed to get up early for it again yesterday and now this morning. This means I have to get there three times by the end of Tuesday to get my money's worth. I wonder if there is a psychological element to this with all the controversy that is lapping around? I also suspect Wimbledon is moving away from the method's strict brand. They have started a one hour class; a move that was previously a no-no as Bikram insists on a standard 90 minute set of asanas that should be the same in any hot studio anywhere in the world.

this kind of thing is my punch bag baby

I went to Bikram Yoga this morning. Facebook has told me that Floyd Mayweather did it this week as well in the run up to his rematch with Marcos Maidana in three weeks time, thus confirming once more its unlikely badassery,

The 8am Sunday session won't be an option for me once the rugby season starts again in a fortnight as I will have duties getting the Bomber to 10 o'clock kick offs.

He's still asleep at the moment. In two weeks time he will have waking up duties as well.

getting a handle on it

I usually go to yoga on the weekends, but I bowled up at 6:30am  this morning as my brother is coming up tonight and staying until Sunday.

I've been 284 times now - see Icons passim - without ever feeling the need of a strabismo-mat that would talk to me.

Fingers crossed John and I will be hitting the gym tomorrow. The new plates they have got there have handles: Strabismic on the surface, but a genuinely useful innovation. I wonder that no one thought of it before.

Tomorrow's session - if it happens after the drinks planned tonight - is more likely to resemble Daniel Genis's Barbells Behind Bars, 10 Years of Prison Weightlifting than yoga etiquette.

Awkward Pose

“I just want to be able to touch my toes without squeezing the life out of my boys.” True dat. Utkatasana is where it kicks in for me.

Fake it till you make it

Being away skiing for the next two Saturdays I am going to struggle to get my five yoga sessions in this month; dukkha.

Yoga

X-ray Body in Motion - Yoga from hybrid medical animation on Vimeo.

Myself: You like this?
Prodnose: It's very nice. It looks like hollow wood.
Myself: This is my exact inner structure, done in a tee shirt. Exactly medically accurate. See?
Prodnose: So in other words if we were to take all your flesh and blood...
Myself: Take them off. This is what you'd see.
Prodnose: It wouldn't be green though.
Myself: It is green. You see how your blood looks blue.
Prodnose: Yeah, well that's just the vein. That's the color of the vein. The blood is actually red.

I went to yoga twice last weekend. I generally just go Saturday morning, but there aren't all that many days in February and I have to use the five sessions a month for which I am signed up. That's four and a half years I've been knocking out the asanas now. If you are still reading here you have a remarkably high tolerance for tedious drivel.

Glass Cages

When I was in University I would read anything at all when I was in the library as long as it was nothing to do with the Chemical Engineering I was ostensibly studying. That must be how I came, in those days, religiously to read Taki's column in The Spectator.

Not only is it still running apparently, all these years later, but Charles Saatchi has taken umbrage at some comment or other in it about that unpleasant business of his break up with Nigella Lawson, and written to the Spectacularlyboring as follows:

Dear Ms Taki: Although The Spectator is a lovely read, I always skip your column, I’m afraid. I am simply not interested in your social life. I know that you delight in telling readers that your friends of Prussian nobility find you hilariously entertaining company at their swanky Europoncy parties.

But it was very hapless of you to spring to Nigella’s defence last week (High life, 18 January), as she always found you toe-curlingly vile, and would have been aghast at having you as her valiant supporter.

People tell me that in your unreadable column you also like to brag that you are a Black Belt at karate. Well, me too, old boy. But apparently your ‘fights’ are genteel affairs, against other soppy geriatrics rolling around the floor in crisp white outfits, in some bit of Judo Kai nonsense. Mine take place in cages, 20 feet square, unofficial little events with no gloves, no rules, and the loser being carried out, usually battered to bits. You will understand why I laughed out loud at your schoolyard boast that I should try throttling a real hard case like you.

Charles Saatchi London SW3

Taki has replied.

I am 77 years old, 5ft 9in, and weigh 185lbs. I am willing to face him any time under cage-fighting non-rules, which will be a first for me. I need three days’ notice.

I await developments with interest.

While we are on the subject of MMA, ahead of the UFC Fight Night in London early in March, I was watching the video below in which James Haskell met up with Jimi 'The poster boy' Manuwa who will be headlining at that event. Four minutes and thirty seconds in James (of Wasps and England) and Jimi (the fighter) do some of the hot yoga that is part of Manuwa's training. That is right, hot yoga like what I do once a week. Maybe I can fight the winner of Saatchi versus Taki?

Arise, take up your mat

I've been to yoga more than 250 times now. I subscribe to a five class a month programme at Bikram Wimbledon and, barring accidents, you will pretty much always fine me at the 8 a.m. Saturday class.

Having stumbled on this video of the England Rugby League team grunting through asanas, I have decided to post it here and create a new Yoga label for the blog that I can use - retrospectively - to thread together the thoughts that I have shared from the mat over the last few years.

Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners.

What with the crash and roar of Nathan Cleverly losing his world title last weekend, I initially missed the fact that Londoner Darren Baker had climbed back up from the canvas to win the IBF Middleweight world title.in Atlantic City on Saturday.

I'd read about him before in the build up to the fight astounded to find that, due to a hip problem he was training with yoga and swimming and did no road work at all.

I was too hung over to go to Bikram at 8am last Saturday, though I did swim later in the day and caught up with my yoga practice on Sunday. I mustn't let that happen again tomorrow after tonight's blues at the Mills.

As to the meditation side of things, Scott Raab could have been channeling me when he wrote:

I've been aware for a long time that my default version of mindfulness — relentless hypervigilance spiked liberally with dread — isn't the optimal recipe for living a balanced life. A dash of OCD, a touch of bipolar disorder, a sprinkling of sociopathy, a heavy dusting of addiction: Mix constantly and serve piping hot. Feeds exactly one raging asshole.

Life on the edge

Aeon is a new digital magazine of ideas and culture, publishing an original essay every weekday.

On the day of my 191st yoga class, I commend it to you via:

Bend, don't break

When you’re living in Beirut and violence keeps spilling into your life, where do you go to find strength? Try yoga

Nathan Deuel

epistaxis and emesis

I only get to Bikram yoga about once a week lately.

Yesterday was my first visit in a fortnight. One person quit after vomitting and another went out with a nosebleed but gamely continued after a running repair.

As Richard Cockerill knows (see Icons passim), the heat and the effort will kick your backside if you don't respect it.

getting in your face

This time last  year I was in the middle of a Bikram 30 day challenge (Icons passim). If I make it to the Saturday morning session I've booked for the day after tomorrow I will have been to yoga one hundred and sixty nine times altogether.

Good to see the All Black baiting Richard Cockerill getting with the programme.

Don’t throw up on the carpet. It’s new.

I finished a 30 day challenge at Hot Bikram Yoga's Balham studio yesterday. That's thirty consecutive days of one and a half hours of yoga sessions in a humid room heated to 40 degrees Celsius.

I started it because I had hurt my left elbow in the gym and I wanted to give it a rest from weights. In the first week, I put out my back out rushing Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee Pose. In the second week I got, what I took to be, gout in my left big toe triggered by dehydration and what may euphemistically be described as lifestyle choices (diet and booze). By this time, it was taking me twenty minutes to get out of bed before I could leave for the 6:30am class, and I couldn't hobble over a pedestrian crossing before the light turned red again.

I remember in this semi invalid period watching some other people in the full expression of Standing Separate Leg Stretching Pose. I had no idea we were attempting something that looked so extreme, or indeed that human beings could actually do it.

There is a strange sense in which, if you are committed to doing something every day, there is no rush, and for the last few weeks it has all been on the up. (Apart from one evening where I took a class, ate dinner at 9pm, found that Enter the Dragon was playing at 10pm on the TV, watched it over a wine box, and still took myself off to Balham at six thirty the next morning. That wasn't pretty.)

Then yesterday, as I was looking forward to finishing and chucking it in for a while, I finally got my head turned correctly in triangle pose found myself thinking, "I can probably get the hang of this if I do it forever."