day 34 - I need yoga now to feel normal

I took a day off from yoga on Wednesday and Saturday. Yesterday, which was Sunday, I realized that after yoga I felt like myself again... which means that yoga has become a habit that I need to feel normal. Today I felt like I was working so hard, that the class is so difficult, but I persisted and I'm proud of how I kept it together mentally and brought myself back into working hard. What keeps me going, a lot, is remembering C. the teacher from Bikram yoga Vancouver, who was my teacher twice only, saying that we have to have the attitude that we don't have a choice but to do each posture. C. said many times in those two classes that torment lies in the choice, so when you remove the choice and just accept that you have to do the posture, then you can be at peace. I'm really glad he said that because it gets me through a lot. What I've been doing when my heart races (pretty much the entire class) is focussing on breathing and trying to breathe as much air in as I can as if I were drinking it. Breathing deep like this helps to calm me down. I keep trying not to hold my breath, that's something that I keep repeating to myself in my head so I won't forget. Today, day 34, was a day when I felt scared of camel pose again and felt like I was weak from fear to stand on my knees and I wouldn't let myself look in my eyes in the mirror the second time we did the pose because I didn't want to see the fear. I had the thought that it scares me just to see how my face doesn't show fear at all because I'm worried that people can't read my fear and won't help me if I need help. This has something to do with my family dynamic, but it's probably complicated :) because I can't relate it to anything specific except I know a lot of fear comes from when I was a kid and needed help and support and didn't get it. But, anyways, I went really far back and saw the floor in camel so I'm happy with that except I felt like I wasn't pushing forward consistently and have to work on that. There are two poses that I am so slow to get into that sometimes I don't even get into position before the time that we are allotted is finished. One of the poses is when we stand and bend forward to put our forehead to the knee (I take a long time to lower down but I'm proud that I think I touched my forehead today on my left leg). The second pose that is sometimes over before I get into it is rabbit. One thing that's tough in rabbit is I can't grab my ankles so I keep working on trying to grab my ankles and trying to find a way to grab the towel that works. As long as yoga has really become a habit... I will eventually be able to do rabbit, etc. better than I do now. I have problems executing every single pose, but I'm getting stronger every class.