day 13 - Bikram Yoga Challenge and why I think I will blog about it

I finished day 13 of a 50 day challenge. I wanted to blog because I am actually going through changes, just like the articles and marketing of bikram yoga says I would. Lots of parts are getting fitter physically and mentally.

One physical change that I didn't know to expect is that my hamstrings got rock hard. I am used to having strong legs, I've always been proud of this, but I had forgotten about my hamstrings. I feel, physically, like I'm gaining back the body I had as a kid when I used to spend hours playing and was thin and strong.

I'm gaining muscular strength and flexibility (I can see my arms getting stronger and my legs getting thinner) but, this is expected when someone regularly does challenging exercise. What I didn't expect from going to class regularly is that my little issues that I had with urination frequency and unusual urgency has stopped. I thought that it was normal for my body to be a little bit different than everyone else's in this way and that I was just a person that has to go to the bathroom every hour, or sometimes every few minutes, and that's just the way my body is. It is really nice that the urgency and frequency have both been reduced and I can spend longer periods of time out of reach of a bathroom. Sometime last year I had taken a few intermittent classes. In one of those classes I had to ask a bikram yoga teacher for permission to leave the room to go to the bathroom - it was so awkward - I even had to leave one of the classes twice to go to the bathroom, and it was normal for me to not be able to last 15 minutes at work sometimes and have to keep leaving. I'm wondering if the urgency and frequency has lessened because I am sweating more or if it is a benefit that can be attributed to wind removing pose.

In bikram's yoga we do a lot of work on the spine - pulling the spine forward, bending it back - and I'm associating this work with the mental changes that I'm having. I am calmer, like I've seen people describe in their online writing about bikram yoga and in testimonials, but there are other mental changes that are surprising me in the same way that I didn't know to anticipate the physical effects. It's hard to describe mental state, but one thing I can attest to is that I recently had to write a final exam and I felt like I didn't need to study as hard because my memory just seems to be stronger.