small sunday class—it was so overcast this morning, i have a feeling a lot of people slept in. it was kind of a slacker class, despite the incredible heat! yikes, what a scorcher it was in the room! and me with a small glass bottle instead of my 20 oz. klean kanteen. after the first set of pranayama, one of the teachers, who was practising, raised her arms for ardha-chandrasana. this made some of the other teachers giggle and that set the tone for the rest of the morning. my friend left the room for a potty break during the floor series, when she came back and later went into the wrong pose, our teacher said “see, that’s why you never leave the room.” she said this during our second set of bhujangasana and i think the whole class fell out of the pose in laughter. at least i know i fell out with my face straight down into a pool of sweat. today’s class was a good reminder to always wait for the instructions. if you’ve done the poses, know what’s coming next and start going on your own, you lose the meditation of the practise. that’s when bikram yoga becomes like another workout rather than a yoga practise. just doing the poses doesn’t mean you’re doing yoga!

okay friends, one more from the backyard for you—those are raindrops on the petals, not a cool color pattern! happy weekend. i’m starting to sound like a broken record, but thank you for all the kind words and thoughts! see you tomorrow ~m

my belly was a little quesy this morning, so i waited until the last possible moment to go into the studio, not sure how class was gonna go. i told my teacher i was prolly gonna take it easy, but you wanna know what? it was an awesome 10 am class! there were only about 20 benders, but the energy in the room was so strong. it’s amazing how the group energy can really carry your practise if you let it. right now, as i’m writing to you, i’m feeling the way i felt before class, but during, i felt solid as a rock. what did i say about taking yoga out of the studio and into real life? sweat friends, i don’t think it would work for me in this case. i’m totally paying the price for yesterday’s fancy, gourmet, refrigerated pizza. i still have problems with my digestion, but it’s not as bad as it used to be, thank bikram!

here’s another from the back yard. i love the colours of this picture—click and enjoy! see you tomorrow ~m p.s. the three clues that this blog is california born and bred? awesome. totally. and the fact that i ate a gourmet pizza.

500 days in a row and i’m still the same awkward nerd i was when i started. my teacher surprised me before class and told me how nice it was to have me as a presence in the room and talked about what she thought i brought to the room, i dunno. i got so flustered and a million words were running around my head all trying to come out of my mouth at the same time. i started to say something and stuttered to a stop three different times before i finally just said “thank you.” that’s all i needed to say anyway, right? i may have a nice practise inside the studio, but who cares? that’s not what yoga is about. after 500 days in a row, i think i can say the real goal of yoga is taking that bengal tiger strength and bulldog determination with me into the other 22.5 hours of the day. so with that revelation, i bid you a fond friday!

there must have been a light mountain morning mist before i took this picture, you can see tiny raindrops on the petals! click and enjoy. see you tomorrow ~m

where do i start? class today was another scorcher, if you let it be. relax and breathe, that’s the most important thing. you struggle so much when you lose your breath. that’s when bikram yoga turns into a workout rather than a yoga practise. heavy breathing is contagious too. on my left was a guy whose heavy breathing dominated the room from ardha-chandrasana to janushirasana with paschimottanasana. sometimes his breathing got to the girl on my right and she would start! the stereo sound was on full-blast during the floor series and all i could think to myself was that i was doing okay. don’t get me wrong, i was getting worked, but still hanging in there, you know? right before sasangasana, the girl next to me let her hair down. it’s hard not to look when she does this. she always wears her hair in this cute bun and then lets it down for rabbit. it goes down to her waist and it’s so beautifully soaked in sweat, today when she let it down, the room was filled with a wonderful shampoo scent and prolly for the first time ever the studio smelled clean. okay, that’s enough about bending for one night. you’ve seen some of the backyard and you’ve seen plenty of the flowers that have been planted in it. how about some of the wild ones in the backyard? there are 5 different wild tiger lilies that shouldn’t be were they are. i know tiger lilies come in a million different colours but i think this one is really kinda cool. see you tomorrow ~m

farmers market today! that means many things in my world. i stock up on a lot of the foods i’m gonna eat for the week. i take lots of pictures at the farmers market. it also means i usually don’t have a complete breakfast on hand. today my breakfast was sad. i think i had two small oranges before i had to dive into my lunch. mmmmmmm, meat loaf sandwich with plenty of chard and romaine! it was tasty at the time, but during noon practise, i was silently burping the green bell peppers that had been minced into the meat loaf. the gross factor din’t bother me so much as i kept losing my breath. not a lot of benders in class today, but there was still a good heat to the room. not a good day to be struggling in any department, but to keep losing my breath? it made class a challenge. by the time we got to the final stretching, i was ready for class to be over! it took all my energy to make it through the final spinal and khapalbhati breathing. i din’t finish my strongest, but i finished with what i had. hey, you saw the videos, you know i don’t have much to start with. alright sweat friends, i’m sure fresh eggs look like a blank canvas to some of you, so i promise i won’t bore you with any more egg photos after today. at least for a little bit. here’s today’s haul, love the stumpy background! see you tomorrow ~m

today was one of those days when you really have to stay in your own practise and not let the heat do you in. we got worked! pk gets you through class pretty quickly, wether you’re ready or not. the pace of his class is like the bikram cd. one pose after the next. forget about that second party time before supta-vajrasana! oh, is that common to other bikram yoga studios, or just ours? anyway, i thought yesterday was challenging, but that was only a primer for today. good class to have since i plan on doing a double at the end of the week.

yesterday i showed you the chickens and i told you i photograph their eggs everyday. i still haven’t told you what else i’ve been doing with the eggs. my new pre-dinner snack is a fried egg and ham on whole wheat! god bless the chickens. they get all my vegetable and fruit ends. one thing i’ve learned is that chickens really like carrots and strawberries. actually any kind of fruit. the extra food hasn’t helped egg production, they’re on a four day cycle—one egg, two eggs, one egg, no eggs. here’s a typical egg week. you can also see the homegrown rosemary and chard i get to enjoy! i must say, the chard was egg-selent in my turkey sandwich last week, ha ha. i’ll stop while i’m egghead. oops, did it egg-ain. oh my. ~m

happy monday from paradise. yesterday i was watering some fruit trees and a hummingbird came to dance in the shower of water i was making. it was one of the coolest things i’d ever seen. sometimes i feel so “at one” with nature. i never used to feel that way, but bikram yoga has opened me in ways i would never have imagined. challenging class today but that was to be expected with so many bodies in the room. i din’t know the woman on my left and she kept saying “i’m sorry” every time she hit me. i kept telling her “don’t apologize!” it’s only yoga, inside the studio we’re all one, if you hit me or i hit you, it’s not intentional, we’re just trying to bust our hot yoga moves, ha ha. not really, but yeah, kinda sorta. stretch your arms out, let’s fly! speaking of poorna-salabhasana, i am so slow in going into that pose! my spine is so misaligned, i really need to go into that pose slowly to make sure i don’t lose my alignment otherwise i splay off to the side. going up slowly, allows me to keep my body straight and aligned. plus, it’s one thing to lift your chest up high, but your feet are supposed to be up as high as your head—that’s hard! my chest goes up higher than my feet all the time. what do i remind myself? form before depth! okay that’s enough bikram bits for today. yesterday you saw the eggs, here’s the chickens! chickens are just as hard to photograph as eggs, but for different reasons—they move around too much! since this isn’t national geographic, i think this is the best i’m gonna get for now. they’re beautiful, aren’t they? see you tomorrow, m