Sandy Collins

The Challenge……..  Accomplished!!! Tomorrow I will go to Day 60 and Class 61 just for good measure and then I will take a few days break from Bikram Yoga.

My class today was really nice….. I barely noticed the heat, did every posture, and it went by so quickly. I spent my time in class today simply following the instructions of the postures without anticipation and without a thought about how many more classes I had to do to finish the challenge. The Challenge was to finish the challenge in the allotted time and I was in my last 90 minutes today with nothing to do but listen to and follow the instructions.

How refreshing and healing it was to have no agenda…. to just listen to and follow the instructions. Each instruction was a key to the possibility that I would be able to move my body in a slightly different way and open up the areas still stuck from too much time spent ….. not moving. I love finding the functionality and possibility of my body. The Challenge is to reverse time spent …… not moving. The Challenge is to believe that even I  can move better once again. The Challenge is to extend and improve the quality of my life.  All that shows up in extending myself out enough to complete The Challenge of doing 60 Classes in 60 Days of Bikram Yoga.

The Challenge is not over……. it’s only beginning!!!

Thanks so much to staff and students of Pure Bikram Yoga…… you guys are great!!!   Check them out at purebikramyoga.com when you get a chance.

After 54 days I find myself counting down my remaining 6 classes in a 60 Day Challenge of Bikram Yoga.  The Challenge is to do 60 classes in 60 days. That is a lot of work and this year I found myself wanting to forego the glory of completion to the mundane of “I almost made it, but…..”.  Oh yeah! This year I really wanted to quit!

The challenge this year was multi-faceted. It was a mixture of noticing my body arguing with me the entire time, my mind saying “you have done this…. you can do something different”, and a whole lot of “I don’t want to”.

I have to say though….. I am truly grateful that I have kept going. I am stronger and I find myself in a new place with my travels in the world of yoga. I can do things in the postures that were absolutely impossible in the beginning. I can tolerate the heat, allow the sweat, reach for my water bottle fewer times during a class and actually do an 8am class without sitting on my mat for the entire class. I have found that complaining about having to go to class everyday makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.   What makes the big difference is simply showing up for class. Going to any class time, with any teacher, sitting anywhere in the class is challenging, but simply showing up is the one thing that changes my life for  the better more than anything else.

Thanks to all my supporters…. my friends who cheer me on, my clients who frequently ask how it’s going, my family for putting up with my complaining the most. Thanks to my daughter for going to class with me the first two weeks and always saying….. “Mom…just go to yoga!” I have a special thank you to Leslie for reminding me that it was my third year…. the healing year. She was right! It has been a 60 Day Challenge of healing on many levels.

Six more classes and counting……. thank you PureBikramYoga! You guys are awesome!!!!  Check these guys out at www.purebikramyoga.com