i don’t know friends, i think my morning emergen-c is really the ticket for feeling refreshed post-bikram yoga. You shoulda seen them today, the way they were acting! Lots of huffing and puffing. i think at least two different people left the room before we even got to the floor series! i’m not sure, i was actually pretty focused for a change. Before k-man could even finish up the class, people were already up and out. i actually got kicked as a woman rushed for the door! At least it was only my foot. Today was hot, but it was hotter and more humid yesterday! I guess if you wanna get out, knowing it could be worse isn’t gonna make it better. I like being able to get through the entire class and not look like i’m dragging or sound like i’m about to die. sometimes i feel like that on the inside, but i always try and look like i’m enjoying myself. after a really brutal class, i usually feel completely debilitated. That’s where i think my morning emergen-c has made the biggest impact, the way i feel immediately after practise. it’s so nice to feel so good, i really do feel energized, it’s so cool! i’m so lucky to be able to go to yoga everyday, this is really the greatest thing you could do for yourself! namaste, m

Some monday-fridayers don’t like to practise on saturday or sunday because there’s too many people, it gets too hot or they may not get “their” spot. Today, I din’t get my spot, my second choice spot or my third choice spot, so i took my fourth choice spot. Thanks to the crowdedness of the studio, that 4th option turned out to be the best spot in the studio. The big guy is always looking out for me in his own way and i know he was smiling down on me today. My eye candy tests keep getting harder and today i did pretty well considering. In a different life i would have enjoyed just sitting and watching, nowadays it’s nice to be able to (sorta) keep up. I like the weekend classes because they’re filled with challenges to your practise. Wether it’s a heavy breather or a hot teacher, if you can tune it out and focus on yourself, you’re doing pretty good. Honestly, i still have a way to go, but i can tell i am well on my way! It’s so cool to feel like i’m on the right path. The other day, I got back from the farmers market and i realised that i forgot lemons. You wanna know what happened the next day? My landlord brought me some fresh lemons grown on the property here! Isn’t that nice how things worked out?

In sporting news today, we’ve got the lakers and celtics in the finals! let’s win two on the parquet and then bring it back home for a win on our court. Yeah, i wanna sweep—have you seen boston play? Meanwhile on CBS, we’ve got kimbo slice leading the mma into prime time. Too bad. CBS doesn’t care about mma, they just want a big ratings extravaganza. The same way the DeLaHoya-Mayweather fight renewed interest in the pugilistic arts, this could have been a great chance to make a lot of new mma fans. Instead, cbs gives us a one-trick pony with no real mma experience. It’s like watching a butterbean fight instead of a miguel cotto fight. I’ll still be watching, even though netflix hooked me up with some laurel & hardy for tonight! Enjoy your day, friends! ~m

i knew today was going to be a real test of my focus and concentration. I was in between a fidgety breather and a fidgety person. Before we began, i thanked our creator for giving me such a great chance to work on my focus and concentration. as i looked at myself in the mirror, i noticed he responded because there were two cute girls behind me. thank you lord, i love every test you give me. how did i do? well, it was a little hot today and not only did the breathing get loud, but then a shirt came off (in pretty much any circumstance, that’s a beautiful sight) and it was all i could do to stay in my practise, but i did. just because i was aware of things din’t mean it had an affect on me. after class, in the showers, some of the guys were complaining about the heat, but it’s not so bad if you are able to stay in control of your breath. steady breathing makes the heat tolerable. we’re not here to have fun, we’re doing a lot of work and last time i checked, work isn’t fun, but we make the best of it. so keep your arms out and locked at all times and remember, we learn each pose in steps. never moving on to the next step without mastering the first. namaste ~m

I think it may have been a little hot today—two people left the room today! I think it’s been way hotter in the room, so i din’t notice any difference until i got embarrassed in front of the whole class, then it felt like a thousand degrees! At the end of class, my teacher acknowledged the everyday commitment to her practise that one of my mat-mates has made for over well over 30 days now! We were all applauding for her when she had to speak up and say "but mckinley's been coming everyday since january" which received more applause, but i liked it better when the spotlight was shining elsewhere. not even from a health stand point, going to bikram yoga everyday is pretty easy to do when you have teachers that are so easy on the eyes. oh my gosh, did i say that or think that? i’m not sure what it was because i’ve seen her in more revealing outfits, but today, wow. it was a real test on my focus to stare at myself in the mirror and practise when all i wanted to do was steal looks at her. and then she had us take a break to explain something about how to hold our hands in tuladandasana but don't ask me what it was, i was listening with my eyes. Every other day i’ve been very good about this, but today i couldn’t hear a thing. So much for focus and concentration! actually it was a really good class today, the room felt very positive. And i had what felt like a really good first back bend! it wasn’t as good as the ones i do here in the birdhouse, but it was prolly the best one i’ve ever done in the studio! maybe it was really hot today and i din’t notice it as much because of my pre-bikram emergen-c? i think taking it before class is so key to feeling really really good after class. I’ll keep trying it through the weekend, then skip a day and let you know the results. ~m p.s. go lakers!

Since bikram yoga has pretty much taken over my life, i’ve changed a number of things about the way i live. My diet has gone from cheap taco stands to pretty much nothing but fruit, vegetables and beans. I really like the beans because they have a lot of the nutrients that give you loads of energy. As a bikram enthusiast, i love any kind of food that gives you lots of energy. Another of my new nutrient obsessions is emergen-c! I’ve been on a one-a-day basis with the (appropriately named) joint health flavor for a few months now. I totally swear by it. My knees can tell the difference if i even miss a day. I usually take it after my evening meal, but the last four days i’ve had it right before bikram. It hasn’t affected my practise, but you wanna know what? after practise, i feel so energized! it’s hard to lay in savasana at the end, because i just want to jump up and scream “i feel great!” i really think the emergen-c is kicking in or something! I’m gonna keep trying it all week before practise and let you know how i do. today i was near the meltdown spot and even though it got a little humid, i din’t have that exhausted feeling that i usually have. Oh, i have to be honest, i try and mix in a little fresh juice of whatever fruit i ate that day with the emergen-c. the juice is just collected drips from when i’m slicing or what was left on the plate so it’s not more than a tablespoon usually. last night i had a real juicy white peach and two oranges and got close to a tablespoon. i mixed that juice with about 7 ounces of water and threw it in the fridge. this morning i added my emergen-c and drank it as i walked to bikram. so that’s the full disclosure on my pre-bikram nutrient enhancement. I’ll let you know how i feel after practise tomorrow and we'll see if taking it before really does make a difference! namaste ~m

I saw the best thing ever before practise today. No, smartass, i din’t peek into the women’s changing room, i saw my teacher reading her copy of the dialogue. She is such a good teacher, i love that dedication to her craft. It was like watching a painter clean his brushes. It made me feel good knowing that as long as she’s been doing it, she still goes over the basics. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed with how much there is to bikram yoga. I guess there’s good reason to feel overwhelmed, there’s a lot to learn! Is it true that teachers have to be re-certified every few years? There’s so much you have to learn besides the poses, i can understand why. the other day a different teacher was telling a first-dayer, “I’m not a doctor, i’m a yoga teacher” and i so badly wanted to add “which is infinitely better” but i’m too shy. It’s the way i feel though! this practise is heavy and to be able to teach it, wow! yeah, i’ll take a yoga teacher instead of a doctor any day. and not for that reason, smartass! but now that you bring it up, yeah....

tonight is the night we see if there will be a series in the western conference. If the lakers win tonight and go back to staples center with a 3-1 series lead, i’m pretty confident we’re going to the finals. even though they won the other day, i don’t think the spurs are playing with any sort of urgency. like i said, we’ll see tonight. go lakers! ~m

okay, i know i said that yesterday was the yoga practise that i’d been waiting for, but *today* was really the yoga practise that i’d been waiting for. It was the perfect combination of workout, spiritual meditation, praying and everything in between and around. the other T has such a great pace! i really like her classes, i wish i could take more of them. today the room was really crowded and hot, but i still felt alone and in myself. it feels good to have my focus back, not that i ever stay very focused, but the last couple of days have been so rough. okay, maybe i do stay pretty focused, that's what was so rough, not having that wonderful focus that takes you out of the studio and somewhere else. alright heartbreakers, enjoy your memorial day! ~m

hello heartbreakers, how is the holiday weekend treating you? my morning practise was the one i had been looking forward to. it was so nice to sweat today, lots of good energy in the room. just so you know, there’s a lot of room for improvement in all of my poses, but the pose i feel i should be able to do a lot better than i do is the first backward bend. i just tried it right now and i feel i did it better here in the birdhouse than i did during practise. i don’t know why i can’t get the form in the studio. that’ll be the next pose i do for you guys—ardha chandrasana with padahastasana.

well, we’ll see if we have a series or not tonight. game 3 in san antonio. tnt overtime is great for those of us without cable! they have a live online feed with 4 cameras broadcasting game sound so you get to hear lawrence tanner announcing the game just like you were sitting inside staples center. and watching the 4 camera feed at once squishes up your screen size, but that’s about the size the game looks to you when you’re sitting in the staples center nosebleeds, so like i said, it’s like you’re there! and nba.com has an online feed of the radio broadcast so you can hear your team’s radio crew. that’s all i had to keep up with my lakers until tnt overtime came through for the western conference finals! but we got a good radio crew in spero dedes and mychal thompson, so tonight it’ll be like i’m at the game with my transistor radio at the side of my head! i’m so glad god invented the internet. ~m

after practise, this woman said to me “sometimes you come here to do yoga, but you get in there and you just go through lots of emotions.” i had the same kind of practise today, so that was nice to hear. it’s good to go through that stuff, but sometimes you just want to do yoga. Well, we’ll try again tomorrow, right? ~m

My friend’s dad brought in some of his bikram-inspired paintings to show me. They were postcard-sized canvasses, very cool visualizations of a few different poses. nice baker class today, so hot. i shoulda stayed and done the 12 after. oh well, see you tomorrow. ~m

My life is a seinfeld episode sometimes. Last week, i was walking down the street and a bird flew right into my head! I’ve never thought of myself as having a big head, but it was like this bird couldn’t avoid the side of my head. Later that same day, as i was walking home, another bird had to pull off some last minute fancy aerobatics to avoid the enormous lump sitting on my tiny body!

That was last week. Today, I’m shuffling along the sidewalk on my way to yoga and i felt my foot hit something. i was afraid i had just hit someone’s dump lump, but i had actually kicked a bird in the head! What? Heartbreakers, believe me when i say, i felt soooo bad. It was a little bird on the sidewalk, just sitting there. My heart sank for a minute. Luckily (?) a homeless girl started yelling at me about kicking the bird. I din’t do it on purpose! I din’t even see him, and besides, I THOUGHT WE HAD AN AGREEMENT! Birds get out of our way and we ignore the whole statue thing, right? Well, i felt bad, the homeless girl was mad, but i bet dollars to doughnuts that there were a bunch of city kitties high pawwing each other. ~m

my sister was here the other day. we were talking about bikram yoga and she said she din’t think she could handle the heat. it scares a lot of people away or keeps them from coming back. If the room was 75°, she thought she could practise, but not if it was 105°. Your body doesn’t get limber enough to do some of the stretches without the heat though. At our studio, there is a cool wall and if i practise along side it, i don’t get warmed up enough. My body isn’t as flexible and i have to set up the positions a little slower than i normally do. Today it was plenty warm, a little too warm for the guy next to me. i think he tried getting up to leave the room, but couldn’t make it further than trying to get up. That’s when you have to direct all your positive energy outwards in support. After class, i told him he was right next to the meltdown spot, in my opinion, the hottest spot in the room. He got all smiles and said, “thanks man, that makes me feel a lot better.” You shouldn’t feel bad about having a rough class. I’ve had rock bottom classes! There’s no shame in it, that’s what suffering is all about. It’s through our suffering that we learn and grow. That’s what makes having a daily practise so exciting and fun, you learn everyday where you are. speaking of where you are, i gotta be not here, heartbreakers. ol’ mckinley had to go, farmers market, don’t you know. ~m

Well, first off, let me congratulate Lynn on her birthday today! Happy birthday Lynnee! ha ha. Oh, how i miss being back home, being around all my friends. And how easy my life used to be back home too. Oh, it’s not so bad being here, I have to admit. It is kinda like paradise, beautiful weather, beautiful girls, i guess i don’t really miss home all that much! What’s that saying, “it’s better here”? i think that’s appropriate. Thank you to everyone for making me feel welcome here. I really appreciate all the support everyone is showing me!

Should i write about practise today? It was a good one! C really got us cooking, it felt so good. i love her pace, her jokes, she’s so great. seriously, all the teachers at the studio are really good, but she is something special.

okee dokes, the eastern conference finals start soon. Boston has been in two game 7s this season and they’re playing the pistons who have had quite a bit of time off. i think boston will play tired and detroit will play rusty. Let’s hold out hope that the game is exciting, but who knows. i’m sure it will be a low scoring affair and we prolly won’t get too excited until robert horry makes his first foul tomorrow against the lakers. namaste ~m

Well, you guys, the most exciting part of the basketball season is almost here! We were lucky to have a game 7 in each of the the semi-finals. Tonight’s western conference semi-final between the hornets and spurs should be one of the most exciting games of the year! How can you not be excited about game 7? I was so bummed yesterday to miss most of yesterday’s celts-cavs game 7, but i tuned in with a few minutes left on the game clock and it was pretty exciting up to the time where they had to start fouling. at this point i guess i should try and bring this around to yoga. can you imagine how much better the sport would be if every NBA player practised bikram yoga? The discipline and focus that bikram yoga instills in you is something sadly missing from most people, but on the basketball floor, it’s so apparent. Just imagine: complaints about fouls, poor transition defense would all be history! Players giving 100% effort all the time, playing the right way, wow, that’d be pretty exciting! regardless, i’m excited anyway, it’s the middle of may and the lakers are still playing! ~m

What a way to wake up! From here to the yoga studio, it was all foggy! I felt like i was back home! the may gray felt so good, it was a beautiful way to start the day. and practise was so nice, there was a lotta love in the room. During the water break, a little angel gave her water to a 1st-timer who din’t bring one. it was such a nice gesture, it says something about the atmosphere in the studio and the support we try to give each other when we’re practising. What did jason winn say? you should want the person next to you to have a better practise than you or something like that. it was kinda that way today, which is all i need until tomorrow, but that’s just some other time. ~m

we are in the middle of a heat wave, aren’t we? another day where i actually took water during practise. not coincidentally another day when i’m feeling a little dehydrated *before* class. time to start making adjustments because it wasn’t as hot in the room as people were acting like it was. it’s just a matter of staying focused. Even the standing bows were distracting because the row felt so nice today—i wanted to look to my right so bad! it was hard to stay focused on mine, but i did! I’ve got a long way to go before lose the awareness of my surroundings, but i know it’s in me. it’s like the john lee boogie chillun, it’s in me, it’s just gotta come out! ~m

oh boy kitties, it’s a scorcher today! i should have known today would be a tough class. i think i was dehydrated before i started yoga, i know i sweated enough on my way there. and of course I have to be embarrassed in front of the entire class before we can begin. that’s what i get when i forget to put my yogitoes down. that was prolly the second bit of foreshadowing that i missed. well, if you wanna talk about suffering, let’s talk about today’s class. Not only did i savasana out a set of salabhasana, but i had to take water during supta-vajrasana. i’m proud to say it’s been a long time since i took water during practise. i know it’s not part of the posture, but it was a rough one for me, i had to cave in. i was so weak and hungry, i felt pathetic for awhile. when we were lying on our backs in savasana, my head kept tilting back, i thought i was gonna pass out. but the sit-ups really do energize you, so you can’t pass up on them, no matter how out of it you feel. although i felt like i din’t bring it today, i wasn’t the only one who was having a tough class—c opened both doors in the room! That's happened all of zero times in the last 6 months and i know she wouldn't do it just for me, as nice as that sounds. the cool air from the open doors and the sit-ups were what got me through practise today. now, onward to rehydration!~m

have you ever picked avocados? if you’ve never lived in california or mexico, then the answer is prolly no, huh? don’t feel bad, i’m california born and bred and i’ve never picked an avocado. the other day i got a chance to change that though. when it’s on the tree, the avocado likes to hide in the most obvious places. it’s weird, they’re right in front of you, but you can’t see them, and it’s not like they’re really hidden by the leaves that they grow near. you just kinda have to close your eyes, stop looking for them and then, there they are! For the ones that are really high up, we had a pole with a small wire basket on top. Prolly pretty common, but i’d never seen one before. The top of the basket curled a little so you just aimed for the avocado and then pull down and it falls into the basket. it was kinda like playing operation! (is that still a game or am i old?)

avocados are really good for you too! Did you know they contain more potassium than bananas? Plus they’re loaded with lots of B vitamins. we like that, don’t we? 21 grams of mostly monounsaturated fat, is that the good one? i don’t know, but because of the fat content, a lot of people substitute avocado as meat in their sandwiches. Personally, i think i'll pass, but if you like them, now even more reason too. alrightee then, that concludes our food lesson for today.

getting on topic for a change, yoga was super hot today! wow, i think the most appropriate word would be “brutal.” and then K had to remind us how crowded it gets in teacher training! can you imagine how hot that must be? not me. it wasn’t even crowded today and it was almost unbearable. i guess that’s why bikram says you can choose between 90 minutes of suffering a day or 90 years of daily suffering—you really do suffer for those 90 minutes! namaste, ~m

“another sunny afternoon, walking to the sound of my favorite tune.” lots on my plate today, friends. gotta go to the farmers market *and* we’ve got a pivotal game 5 tonight! Here’s my garurasana for you. i’ve got a problem with my step—when i balance on my right foot, the foot tends to splay way out to the right. in this video i am struggling so hard to keep it where it is. which isn’t straight, but not as bad as when i see myself in the mirror in the studio. it’s also not so bad second set. you also can’t see the gap between the top of my wrapping foot and the back of my leg, but i think it’s there. enjoy! ~m p.s. go lakers!

Bikram yoga changes you so much, it’s really weird. i’ve increased my awareness of nature so much in the last 6 months. honestly, the changes are incredible to me. I feel so much closer to birds, lizards, pretty much any creature i see nowadays. Even the bees that hang around the birdhouse don’t always freak me out. sometimes i feel like they know who i am in some way. it’s hard to describe, but easy to feel. for the last couple of months i’ve been contemplating a no-meat diet. it’s kinda weird to think about, but i’m having trouble justifying anyone dying for my meal. the other day i had some tilapia. it was delicious, but it made me think of 3 fish swimming. why would i want to stop that? you know, i used to love tuna sandwiches, but never even thought about the tuna (hey charlie!). i din’t even know what one really looked like, how sad is that? after some searching around on youtube, i found this great video on tuna hunting. please watch it if you have a few minutes to spare. i’m not sure how you’ll feel afterwards, but i think i’ve had my last can of tuna. ~m

For the record, friends, I don’t think the Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Black Angel” was in any way influenced by the Velvet Underground’s “Black Angel’s Death Song.”

Now that we have that out of the way, how was your weekend? Mine was pretty depressing, punctuated with 2 lakers losses. Oh boy. Have you been watching the NBA playoffs? I haven’t. I have been *listening* to them though. I only get about 8 channels on tv, none of which carry basketball games (except abc), so if i wanna keep up, i tune into the internet/radio broadcast. I like listening to the games, it makes me feel old school. Anyway, you’re really not missing much. Home court advantage seems to play big in every series so far. How else could the 8-seed Hawks have taken boston to 7 games? Boston has 66 wins, but i think that number is inflated with the luxury of being in the eastern conference and playing so many below-.500 teams. Wow. You listen to an away game for boston and it’s like listening to a high school basketball game! If the offense is working, the defense is watching. If the star is on the bench, the team suffers. But boston isn’t the only team that sucks the minute they leave their home court. Look how bad my lakers have played the last 2 games. Actually, i wasn’t as disappointed with their performance on sunday as i was on friday. I really think we would have won yesterday’s game if Ronny (ro-knee, not ronnie) Turiaf hadn’t been ejected. Turiaf’s foul on price was *not* a flagrant 2! i would have been hard pressed to call it anything other than what it was, a good, hard playoff foul. It wasn’t half as rough as Kidd’s foul on Jennaro Pargo in the last round. That brings up my other complaint about the nba—inconsistent officiating. There seems to be no consistency with what gets called and what they’ll let play through. After the betting scandal, it’s hard to not think “fix” when some of the calls being made are so questionable (fisher picks up 2 quick fouls in both utard games, hmmmmm).

Alright heartbreakers, the a.d.d. voice in my head is telling me that i’ve wasted too much energy on basketball. Do you wanna know about the really hot yoga class i had today? it was so nice to have so many familiar faces in the room today! It was like a reunion of my first class 6 months ago! Except now, I can appreciate all of the asanas and i don’t feel like i’m about to drop at any moment. progress is such a good thing. Enjoy your day today. i hope someday we can laugh at the celtics together! ~m
p.s. if you practise bikram yoga in boston, please don’t hate sweat.

Holidays are always great days to be in the city. Everybodys on the highway, motorvating somewhere. The city streets are lonely in the morning and quiet nice. Good day to do an early morning of bikram yoga! Somedays it’s never hot enough. Still a great class though, I love T’s words and pace. I would have stayed for another round of her teaching too, but there’s a lakers game on soon and i still wanted to enjoy the day some. So after practise, i got to hang out in the cemetary for awhile, the trees are so beautiful, and a hummingbird flew over my head for about a full minute, enjoying the same tree i was. it was totally rad. do something nice for mother earth today. luv, m

I like the crowdedness of the saturday classes! With so many people, it can get nice and roasty. I was dripping sweat almost from the start, not as bad as yesterday, but still it looked like someone forgot to turn me off—i was pouring like a faucet! after practising daily for 4 months now, it’s nice to be finally acclimated to the heat and the rapid loss of body weight. I don’t know how i’m gonna handle practising at home! i’ll have to wear sleeveless sweaters or something. as if my current costume wasn’t lame enough. okay, time to remember your form follows your thought even outside of class. enjoy your saturday! ~m

Guess what heartbreakers—it’s game day! and a pivotal game 3 at that! stop me if you’ve heard this before:
what’s the magician’s favorite pose?
TADAsana!

enjoy! ~m
go lakers!

Wow, today’s class was amazing. There was so much positive energy in the room, it was just a really, really good class. I felt so strong and energized throughout, it was awesome. All of my poses may have not been perfect, but i was trying throughout each and every one. We almost skipped trikonasana which would have been just fine with me. That’s my “am i really doing this right” pose lately and today was no exception. Which made it even more exciting when an whispered to me “very nice” as we were releasing. a nice word is good to hear, but even better when you’re not really sure of yourself and your pose. That pose is so rough—there’s a lot going on and in all different directions! Maybe someday I’ll feel confident enough to show you that one! Until then, I’ll keep practising. ~m

Fire! What? I was working feverishly on today’s blog when i heard my landlord banging on my door, yelling my name! What have i done this time? There was a wildfire in the backyard, all available men grab a shovel! It was a little scary on that california mountainside. Growing up in southern california, you always see stories on television about wildfires, dry brush, houses being lost. About 2 hours ago, that’s what i was in the middle of! Wow, it was actually pretty scary. i was trying to get out this one patch of flame and then all the brush around me was on fire! I was surrounded by flames! Talk about sweating! This was the real deal, neal. we’re talking, may day! may day! where’s the fire department? it was looking pretty bad, but then the wind mellowed out and it seemed like the big flames were all gone. The makeshift fire brigade i joined quickly disbanded as soon as the fire department arrived to check out our work. Hey, we’re not professionals! How am i supposed to write about my practise today with all of this? i need to catch up to my heart! All new respect for firefighters now, all new respect. namaste, m

Uh oh, heartbreakers, i think i have a spot. lots of people have “their” spots. i have always been happy not having a spot. well, that’s not the full story. i was kinda developing a spot, but it got stolen from me! ever since then, i have always enjoyed picking a different spot in the room everyday. what kind of mood am i in? how do i feel? those two questions determined where i would put my mat. lately though, i’ve gotten kind of snotty with where i put my mat. i’m so sensitive to misdirected energy, i know i shouldn’t be, but in a communal environment like a bikram studio, i think it’s hard not to be. which is why i think i have a spot. it gets a lot of hot air and i only have to practise next to one other person. this can backfire on me though! like today, the woman next to me was grunting, huffing, in every pose! i think she was all “power yoga” or something because she had a really cut body, totally in shape, she shouldn’t have had any problems with the class. that’s still not that big of a deal though, because there’s always tomorrow! which is what me and my achy breaky back (and my relaxed feet) are looking forward to the most right now! ~m

What’s it like where you are heartbreakers? Here it’s all overcast and may gray, perfect day to curl up on your favorite bar stool and playing lap dog for a good several hours. or a nice day for 90 minutes of sweating in your favorite bikram yoga studio. or how about 180 minutes of sweating in your favorite bikram yoga studio? i don’t know if the weather had any factor in my decision to stay for a second class or not. After the first class, i felt like i was only getting warmed up. So i got myself a tall boy of smart water, drank some of it, poured some of it in my klean kanteen and then dumped a joint health emergen-c in the remaining smart water, which i finished before my second class. My friend complains that his sweat doesn’t sting his eyes all the way through class. this is a sign of not enough saline in his body, right? But he doesn’t eat his vegetables and he relies on a juice concoction to get through class. Trust me, my sweat was still stinging like a mofo during the second class! But I also eat a lot of healthy foods everyday, lots of fruit, vegetables, fruit, chocolate. um, dark chocolate has antioxidants which we need as bikram enthusiasts because we do so much oxygenating of our blood. well, maybe there’s better sources of antioxidants, but my point is, what we eat affects our practise the next day, the day of. some people can’t eat anything before practise. i won’t make it through practise if i don’t eat something before. today i had 6 strawberries and a half-cup of cashews, not a lot, but enough to get me through 2 practises! so if you have trouble getting through class, think about what you put in your body, it matters! namaste, m

Hello heartbreakers! The other day during practise, am corrected me on one of my poses. I think we were in trikanasana, which is a weird pose for me. i feel pretty comfortable with it because i used to do a very similar version back in my exercise video days. that familiarity always makes me feel like maybe i’m not doing something right. I feel like I’m not giving it my 100% but i don’t know where i’m slacking. When she corrected me, i was so grateful, i whispered “thank you.” which she announced to the whole class as the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her while they were being corrected. I’m always grateful for any corrections, it makes me feel like i’m getting special treatment! no, not really, but i love the opportunity to improve my form! That’s why i was really looking forward to the chance to have practise led by Bikram’s wife Rajashree, which was supposed to be today. Too bad it got cancelled. The woman was a yoga champion in india for years! she’s married to bikram! what an opportunity! i admit, i din’t sign up, but i’m living below poverty level right now while sweat gets going, so i’m not really on a rajashree budget, if you get my drift. but i was working on getting myself in there despite the financial difficulties. it would have been such a great opportunity, but even if i had the money i would have ended up missing it anyway—i’ve waited a long time to get to the second round of the playoffs and today is finally the day! go lakers! thank your teacher! ~m

Good morning friends! Did you know there are over 1,000 asanas? i don’t think i could ever attempt all of them. To be honest, i already feel overwhelmed with the 26 asanas we do in bikram yoga! Can you imagine—over 1,000 asanas to choose from and you whittle it down to 26? And then you have to figure out an order for them? It makes sense that Bikram was able to copyright his yoga method—it’s a just like a beautiful song! If you struggle to make it through class, then maybe it doesn’t feel like a beautiful song to you. But if you’re giving 100% in every part of every pose, then it really does feel like the best song you’ve ever heard in your life! And it’s a different song everyday because our bodies are changing everyday! My back has been stretching itself out dramatically over the last couple of weeks. I feel it almost every waking minute of the day, so to say it affects my practise, is an understatement. For a couple of weeks now, my favorite part of practise has been ardha-kurmasana to ustrasana to sasangasana! Man, do I feel great during these 3 poses! It’s like the best thing in the world, right now, seriously! Ardha-kurmasana is one of the few poses that i will do before practise. Everyday, guaranteed, i’ll go forward, nice flat back, arms out (no slack) and my chin hits my knees. I really have to stretch to miss them. During practise, I miss my knees by about 3 inches! That’s how warmed up my spine has gotten with the first 20 asanas! I’m rocking, baby, my body feels so good! This is what it must have been like to see led zeppelin on the brown bomber tour—totally heavy, but rocking, all good times bad times, you know i’ve had my share now i wanna whole lotta love! And then we get to go into ustrasana! Oh baby. this is like a great jimmy page guitar solo, bending notes and holding them with incredible sustain, just like the way my back feels as i’m bending backwards. you know what i’m talking about. and then to go into sasanagasana! Whoohoo! It’s like a great encore for your back and feels. so. good. well, i hope that gives you a little glimpse of what my practise was like today, see you tomorrow. ~m

I bought a hat last week. I’m still not really sold on it, but I’ve gotten quite a lot of compliments! I wanted a Lakers cap, so I could represent everyday in Warriorville, but a cap is impractical for me because I need protection on the back of my neck. I decided anything along the lines of an old man wide brim hat would be just the thing. The first place I went to had a ton of wide brim mexican straw hats! It’s kinda dorky I think, but like I said, people have been telling me they like it! After practise today, on my way home I ran into one of my first friends here in hippiedippieville and we sat and talked, enjoying the morning, and he told me my hat was “pimp.” Like i said, i’m not really sold on it, but later when that was going through my head, someone from a car behind me yelled “nice hat!” and i turned and it was some guy (wearing a cap), giving me a thumbs up and a big grin. Pretty good timing, big guy. I’m going with the hat. ~m

p.s. second time this week, dry spots on my yogitoes!

I know this is supposed to be a yoga journal, but one of the cool things about yoga is that you awaken yourself to a whole new world that was around you the entire time. Yesterday, after writing about my dislike of birds, I was outside doing chores and i saw two hawks flying directly overhead, doing all kinds of circles and cool twists—it was so cool! I ran inside to get my camera and by the time i came out, the hawks were bored and on their way. As I was going back in, i totally got a fly-by in the ear from a hummingbird! Whoa! and I had my camera too! Well, as you can tell from the photos on the website, i ain’t ansel adams. Needless to say, the video was pretty choppy. But today is a new day and another new fly-by!
This one was almost as great as my practise today. Crowded with a lot of good energy in the room! i had a nice sweat going! not only that but an is making a run at being the funny one, so it was a totally rocking practise! I wish you’d been there! ~m