Day 33: AHA!

So, my awesome Bikram teacher friend Liz gave me some great advice that helped me out so much in today's class. She said, "You can still do the postures when you're dizzy." This was a total revelation to me. I'd been getting to the dizzies and then pulling back, which usually resulted in me having to take a knee or lay down. Today when I hit the dizzies, I tried to get in control of my breathing and focus on one spot in the mirror. Even if I felt dizzy, I did the posture. I didn't have to take a knee in any poses, though I did pop out of a few a little early. Compared to the past few days, this is a huge victory for me and I'm so happy.

I had a really intense and awesome standing bow pulling pose today. My left side is a lot better than my right in this pose, and today I felt this incredible sensation in my back as I pushed my foot up to the ceiling and urged my body forward. I felt like I was curling back up instead of just lumbering forward. The rush of blood to my body after I was done was insane.

I pushed bow to the point of getting a cramp in my lower back in both sets. Score! I thought about dropping when I felt the cramp but I figured I only had five seconds at best to suffer with said cramp, and if I wimp out over a measly five seconds, that's pretty pathetic. So I just pushed through until the instructor told us to release and I felt incredible for it.

In food news: I had some carrot/apple/ginger juice before class this morning and I think it might have helped me out a little. I'm going to keep trying to make juice every morning pre-class to make sure I've got some good nutrients in my body. I tend to go to class pretty soon after I wake up, so making sure I get some kind of calories/nutrients in my system is pretty important. Otherwise, I'm running on an empty tank and it makes sense that I would burn through whatever usable calories are in my system pretty quickly. Then, enter the dizzies and weak feeling and malaise.

I feel good after class today. I'm definitely a little tired, but I'm trying to stave off the post-class couch crash as long as possible. I made it til 7:30 last night before I gave in. We'll see how it goes today.