This week, I did Bikram yoga as assigned with the rest of the class. The first thing that I noticed with the beginning of the Yoga practice was that I personally was not in the mindset to start doing Yoga in my living room. Although Professor Laurie was a fantastic example for the poses, I found it hard to make myself motivated when not in the studio setting. The months of Covid-19 have made me lazy, and I think the biggest part of this class is trying to find my motivation to start doing yoga, and to push myself past my boundaries that I've become so comfortable with.

One of the things that we talked about this Yoga practice is that Bikram yoga is a healing yoga, one that strengthens muscles and may help with certain physical aliments. I really like the concept of this, like I said in one of my past journals, I have back problems. This is one of the reasons I took this yoga class, rather than just running or going to the gym I find that yoga has a certain calming quality to it. I think if we were working in a studio the group would make me feel pressured to do better, and in that I feel like I would feel prouder of myself. 

I think I'm going to do Bikram yoga again this week when I'm feeling more up to it. The stances in class were difficult, I started struggling with awkward pose and balancing stick pose. This practice made me realize how out of shape I am. I really used to be pretty athletic when I was younger and I haven't been exercising at all for the past few months, so my strength and flexibility were awful. I'm going to attempt to do more yoga outside of class, not just the once a week required. It makes me feel like I'm missing out on opportunities when I can't keep up in class, and its even harder over zoom and having distractions like my cat biting my ankle.