Savasana

As I was in savasana at the end of the bikram class today I realized that it felt almost exactly the way I feel when I come out of the ocean on a hot day, dripping wet and on my back on a towel.  The sweat pouring off me felt and tasted like seawater, the hot room accentuated by a beam of low, strong January sun on my face and upper body enabled me to be in complete relaxation, drifting on my thoughts and quiet ambient room noises.  I love this feeling; I had been wondering whether I'd miss the ocean terribly out here in Colorado, but it's kind of fun and comforting to think that I can, in a way, conect with the ocean in my bikram classes.

And on the way home I was thinking about this period of my life, these months in front of me.  I don't think it could or should be too reminiscent of Eat, Pray, Love (which coincidentally we just saw on TV) but I do think that there will be phases of my time here, my sabbatical.  The first phase is easy, it's a time of release.  Letting go.  Just being.  I don't mean it's easy to do, just that it's easy to name.  I don't have anything I have to do for the next 3 months.  Isn't that amazing?  And as fate or karma would have it, I have the opportunity to do as much yoga as I choose to in these 3 months.  So until April 2 at least, I'll be in a "release mode" in my life.  My essential daily work will consist of taking care of the house, the dog, our food and myself.  Taking care of myself means doing my very best in my bikram classes to just be in the 90 minute meditation of the class, knowing that in the stillness of my mind and the effort of my body I'll reap the most benefit.  It also means spending as much time outside near the trees, mountains and sky as possible.  It also means dropping the background anxiety about "doing something" productive with my life.  Old habits, old judgements..hence the need for release. 

I feel that I'm already getting stronger in the classes; I still get light-headed and overcome by the heat, but I'm becoming more flexible in my body and more tolerant in my mind of the repetition, length of class, dialogue, etc. Friday's class seemed to go by really fast, so I know I was in the zone.  I'm recovering more quickly from the classes and tend to look forward to the next day's class.  I'm starting to recognize some of the people who attend and even had a conversation with a woman named Laura on Sunday!

After today's class I got a 15 minute chair massage from the in-house massage therapist, a lovely young man named Gabriel who told me that during a regular hour-long massage class, for the price of ten dollars I could upgrade to having him massage me with marijuana-infused coconut oil.  You gotta love Boulder.