I am sitting here in the living room of my good friends Russel and Leila‘s condo unit in One Oasis, and I can barely keep my eyes open out of sheer exhaustion. I pushed myself to the limit today, and I’m all but wiped out. First off, today was the day that I returned to Bikram Yoga after more than a month’s hiatus. I attend classes at Bikram Yoga Eastwood, where I’m currently on the class card program. Although I used to go three times a week back when I was just starting, lately I’ve found myself struggling to complete the 20 sessions allotted on the class card. I don’t know… maybe it’s because as a person who naturally sweats very easily, I’m wary of exceedingly warm temperatures.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a sunny-day person. I mean, I’ll take sunshine over rainy weather any day of the week. Still, there are lots of times when the tropical climate gets the best of me. Like on days when I get all made and dressed up (which is most of the time), it stresses me out that my look gets ruined because by the time I’ve taken a few steps out of the house, the heat and humidity already has me drenched in sweat. And once the sweating starts, it takes forever to cool me down and make it stop. It’s no fun at all.

So you can just imagine why the idea of consciously putting myself in a very warm environment, to do something that on its own raises your body temperature a lot, isn’t very appealing to me. Not to mention that in poses where you bend over so your upper body is upside down, your sweat somehow always manages to trickle inside your nostrils and it STINGS like hell. Try finding your inner peace when that happens and see how you like it.

Feeling peaceful yet? How about about that nostril burn?

Still, despite my inhibitions, I forced myself to go to class–if only for the reason that I was hoping the yoga stretches would soothe and heal the sore muscles I got from this week’s daily workouts and taek training. During class I was pleasantly surprised to find that the strength I’ve built through my WOD’s allowed me to breeze through most of the poses, especially the ones I struggled with before, like Awkward Pose and Balancing Stick.

Who's awkward now, huh? Maybe if I do this pose long enough, my hair will turn into an afro, too.

My ass has gotten so much better at holding my leg up. Functional training FTW!

On the other hand, I was dismayed to find that because of my neglect in stretching my muscles after every workout, my flexibility has decreased significantly over the past weeks. Like when we did Standing Head to Knee and Standing Separate Leg Stretching Pose, my hamstrings and calves literally screamed in pain when I went into the stretch. Gah. Serves me right, I guess.

Standing Head to Knee Pose--otherwise known as Hamstring Torture Du Jour.

Standing Separate Leg Stretching Pose: Makes your hamstrings AND your nostrils scream.

To my relief, the 90-minute class was over before I realized it. After taking a quick shower and getting dressed I drove straight here to One Oasis, where I was set to do another comeback: the return to swimming. Anyone who knows me knows what a water baby I am–I love the water and would never pass up the chance to swim whenever I could. Back when my schedule allowed for it, I would come here to One Oasis on occasion and swim with Russ in the pool. But I haven’t swum laps in ages–and even then I limited myself to only five laps in the pool, because: a) I was being a sissy; and b) I was too lazy to make myself complete 10 laps as Russel instructed. Well, today we had none of that standard wussiness; and on top of that ever since I let slip that I have never completed 10 laps in their pool, Russel has made it his mission to make me do 10 laps OR ELSE.

The first two rounds were a struggle–by the end of the second lap my hamstrings, which I guess had not fully recovered from the beating they got in yoga class earlier, were cramping up. I had to stop for a few breaths to stretch them out and drink a lot of water to ease the pain. Despite this setback though, we didn’t stop swimming until the 10 laps were over and done with. I admit I was pretty proud of myself after that–never mind that I whined all throughout the workout. LOL. The sissiness just kept rearing its whiny head. Good thing Russel was there to slave drive me or else I wouldn’t have had the willpower to finish.

After the swim we headed back here to their unit where Lei was waiting for us with a super-delicious pot of hot beef stew. The yummy dinner Lei prepared was the perfect end to this day of tiring and rigorous workouts. The drowsiness is taking over me now… I’ll head home in a while to get some well-deserved rest.

Note: The yoga images above were borrowed from the Bikram Yoga Grand Central website.