the 2nd week in review

This is the current view from my balcony.


low points:
- i didn't sleep at all between monday and thursday afternoon when i got a nap before the book signing. i would lay in bed each night and just stare at the ceiling with my mind just reeling from practice or lecture of whatever. i think i was awake for about 85 hours, and took class 7 times. i felt run down, but not nearly as tired as i thought i should have been.
- in emmy's class, she kept telling us how lazy and bad we all were and looked at me in camel pose. she asked wtf i was doing, i told her i was injured, and she said "people are not defined by their injuries" so i went further back in the second set and she said "good." in the afternoon class, my back hurt so bad i couldn't even raise my arms over my head without getting shooting pains down my legs.
- shorly thereafter, i decided i don't care for the way she teaches us (but she seems nice outside of class)
- bikram told us we're the fattest group of trainees, ever.
- i cried in every class, twice for the entire duration

high points:
- when in posture clinic, bikram interrupted someone delivering the posture to pull up the sagging pants of a demonstrator
- when bikram demonstrated the difference between standing normal and standing with a flexed butt, by yanking his speedo up his butt and flexing. then he shook his ass and showed us how good he is at disco.
- after a big dinner, bikram lectured us until 1:30am, but before he started, he unbuttoned his pants since he was bloated from food.
- at the grocery store yesterday, my friend margerie made a joke about a penguin stuffed animal and we both laughed so hard we had to sit down, and it wasn't even that funny.
- when jim from san diego taught our class and he was so positive and nice and funny.

quotes:
bikram
- maybe you have diarrhea? constipation? your period?? [to a guy who was nervous]
- you think you look so handsome, but you look like a monkey! a monkey's ass!!
- you can blow all other yoga teachers away with just a fart!
- it's like you're sitting on the toilet and pusing and pushing and nothing comes out! BORING!
- your dialogue is still like blaahhhlaalallalllaaa diarrhea! you cant control it without immodium
- hey jesus, can you move my guru 4' to the left? i need to see myself in the mirror
- now i understand you are from korea because you dont understand english!
- raindrops keep falling on my bald head
- why everyone feel pee during my psture clinic? i dont give a fuck if you pee all evening, just not now!
- i have largest and longest mouth in the whole world. i can stop thunder just by talking
- i make the whole world nervous with my mouth
- do you know how to make burritos? [to a mexican girl]
- you know how i got my schools and house and bentleys? my charm! duh!
- what the fuck kind of hair style is that? i thought i had the worst hair!
- excellent dialogue, excellent hair, just dont go in the dark, you will scare babies.
- i want to count how many more of this shit we have left! hold your shitty arms out so i can count! SHIT!
- that's called shitsasana. we'll get to that when you all have digestive issues
- i cant wait to talk for reals once we finish the dialogue shit.
- you never cross the horse in the grass or he kick you in the ass
- i forget the dialogue all the time, but nobody catch me because i do so much other things, i dont even remember where the shit i am and who the fuck all these people are
- just finish this fucking shit some how!
- there is no more fucking flower left to bloom, they are all dead!
- just fucking say you are from vancouver! island, main land, super land... why you talk so much once the dialogue is over?
- after training, if i hear you fight with your boyfriend or girlfriend, guess what? i kill you, then i hang you.
- cut the shit and give me the fucking diallgue! shit!
- i didn't come here in a container like an oriental or on a boat like a cuban!
- you dont go to east LA, you cant even walk they take your pants!
- smile! what the fuck is wrong with you?!
- the biggest criminials in this earth are lawyers! get them the fuck ut of here!
- i love being rich! now i dont have to steal to see jail house rock 22 times!
- use the past as an example to make the future better
- nothing avert my eyes, i saw your arms and boobs at the same time
- [what if the heating fails in class?] what the fuck is with all these negative shit questions? i dont know, what if you have to fart? what if you have to eat shit and die!
- it took me to 28 to lose my virginity. imagine how sad i was!
- last 3 days i only read 7 pages of my book - i fall asleep!

- it's not enough to suffer, you have to watch yourself suffer -Jim
- i can't ever find you in a crowd, all you white people look alike! -Charm

stretch forward, touch the mirror, hold up the mirror. nearing the end of the second week

today, instead of going to the evening class, we had (and by had, i mean it was mandatory and they took attendance) to go to barnes & nobel for the release / book signing for bikram's new book. we got there all early like they said, and then were at the beginning of the line to get our free signed book (and i had him make it out to ErinCakes, by the way) and get home, but apparently someone had been wondering around handing out number tickets. so we were booted out of line, only to be given tickets #310 and #311 (out of 315). i was SO frustrated. we're already sleep deprived. oh well.
last night was the second night of bikram's lectures until past 1am. they are pretty interesting, but sometimes i just have no idea what he's talking about. the end of the story included a woman giving birth through her ear, and then she gave birth to a meat ball. shannon (from NE) and i were joking about this a lot today, which was nice. i kept on egging shannon on to have bikram sign her boobs, but she decided it wasn't the best idea.
so far, i still really like training. even though i hate class and hate bikram sometimes during class, it's okay. actually part of the reason we didn't have class tonight was so they could install the REAL heater in the room, so tomorrow is going to be the first really hot day (we have been heating the room with an elaborate system of about 50 teensy ceramic space heaters all plugged in w/ extension cords around the room), so that should be interesting.
i am still really struggling with other people now more than ever. last night we got the karma yoga lecture, which was basically about how karma yoga is our destiny; we are all put on this earth to accomplish something and make it better. well, i've decided that one guy's karma yoga is to be a giant douche bag (and by douche bag, i mean turd sandwich). this guy (i call him Las Vegas) is in his mid 40s and prances around with no shirt or an unbottoned shirt constantly. he makes LAME jokes at every opprotunity and was even fighting with our amazing anatomy teacher today over what we're going to be tested on. E V E R Y lecture, he sets up his chair and pillows to immediately fall asleep, and he leaves the room for 25 minutes to walk around because he's bored. last night, he started snoring 4 times during the lecture. anyway, after class i bolted for the elevator and was holding it because i was the first one there. then last vegas showed up and was like "go go go get us out of here" and i said no, we should wait for others because the elevators take SO long. so he kept saying "go go go" over and over while i waited for others and then he made some snyde remark about my karma yoga. i nearly lost it! he was fucking ASLEEP during the whole lecture, and the breif moments he was awake he was mocking bikram. UGH! i guess i should be glad he is in my life, because now no one else gets to me but him. so at least my anger is concentrated :-)

Emy's first class

I just got out of our first class with emy. she is as amazing as everyone has said, except her class made more people cry than ever before. actually my roommate cried for about 30 minutes after class, but she has been through a lot in the last year. i'm sure it had something to do with the fact that posture clinic went until 1am last night. right when we thought we were all done and we applauded, bikram double checked to make sure we were all done and 30 more people raised their hands. *sigh* bikram said it best when counting the raised hands "raise your shitty arms out so we can see how many fuckin people need to get through this shit." ha. so we will probably continue with that tonight. this afternoon is the second day of our anatomy and nutrition lectures, which i really like. it seems like it's going to be pretty easy though, since its all very basic.
interestingly enough, emy came from latvia and during WWII she was placed in an internment camp and then brought to the US to work on a farm in michigan, which is nearly identical to josh's mother's story. i will have to learn how to swear in latvian, or at least say "touch your damn heels to your ass already" to impress her. or at least learn how to say "touch it.... touch it" in the same raspy voice that she does.

hi-lights and quotes from week 1

- when bikram caught craig picking at the skin on his toe during head to knee, and gloated for 10 minutes about catching him.

- when bikram played a song called Bikram Love from his CD during final savasana. imagine bikram singing country with such trite lyrics all you can do is laugh out of embarrassment and horror.

- when bikram sang "Jesus Christ, Super Star" to a guy who looks like Jesus during posture clinic.

- when craig teased a guy in class who looks like Justin Timberlake.

- when in Rageshri's class she mentioned that wind removing pose helps digestion, and we will all suffer digestion problems at one time or another during training, only to have the burliest, most musclar german guy bolt towards the bathroom once the posture was over.

- when a guy from nevada got up for posture clinic, introduced himself to his demonstrators and said "i dont sell cheesecake, welcome to the torture chamber to kill yourself for the next 90 minutes, no money/no honey [insert every other one-liner bikram has used since training has started]" only to then deliver a perfect posture and bikram said "what the fuck is with this smart ass??"

--Quotes--
bikram:
- my shit is biggest shit in the world!
- life is more practical than emotional.
- you can mess with god, you can mess with the world, but you cant mess with your wife. in the middle of the night they cut ff your balls and play ping pong.
- the government, and immigration, they all piece of shit.
- every dog thinks they are a tiger in their own locality.
- where is the chicken's home? in my stomach!
- i invented disco, did you know that?
- you should make them piss their pants. if you piss your pants, how you make money?
- who is that on your shirt, is that me? no, it's david bowie. oh, i was close.
- yoga class is like losing your virginity over and over and over. i wouldn't know, i still a virgin.
- you mess with bikram and you get...beas.... or whatever.
- 1st you were like a rabbit, then a little deer, then you got a little naughty like a fox, at the end not quite a bengal tinger, more like a half dead tiger.
- you were mumbling like you were gargling with someones' pee! maybe you saw porno movie "deep throat"
- it's like you are secretly talking to someone while on the toilet and you dont want them to know.
- each ball should be 1 ton. use 2 ton balls to protect the women.
- your students will make you so angry because they are fucking stupid! they will make you yell and use language!
- oh my god, i sang for you for that shit? Jesus Christ! [to the guy who looks like jesus]
- you are so sweet, you will make people feel so comfortable, especially the old fat ladies.
- humans are the slaves of bad habits.
- when i correct you, why you come up here giving me that same shit?
- 'no air gap?' now what the fuck is that?!
- bend your arms, bend your ass!!
- get Lasik so you dont have that shit on your face
- there are all kinds of holes. we'll talk about those later.
- you will all be so good i will have to give you sleeping pills to shut up
- this dialolgue is the best creation in history

the weekend

so i've had the last 1 1/2 day off. originally, i had big plans for these days. i went grocery shopping after class, then came back to my room and took a nap with my roommate. then we decided we should do something, so we went to the outside area of the lobby and had some juice and we both fell asleep in our chairs. then we went back to our room and slept some more. then this morning, i went to the beach and fell asleep, then walked back to the hotel, wrote some post cards at the pool and fell asleep there. now i'm back in my room and i think i want to take a nap. i'm so hungry and tired all the time, it's crazy!! but i'm excited for class tomorrow morning. i saw they did some more construction on the studio. they walled-up some of the windows to the outside hall way, and hopefully installed a heater that works. i guess it makes sence, but no one has ever needed a powerful heater in honolulu before, so to generate some more heat, some small ceramic space heaters were brought in, which were cute.

we are 1/9 of the way done!

the first week went by pretty fast. i actually am really enjoying training so far. the only thing i've really struggled with so far is craig's awkward pose. yesterday, he said the word 'failure' during the posture, and it REALLY stuck with me. when i fell out of awkward, standing bow and balancing stick, all i heard was 'failure, failure, failure.' i asked him about his motive behind using that word, and he had a quip of a response, so i said "i suppose that's fair, but i know a lot of people were really affected by it.' and he said "of course its fair i'm the teacher." *sigh* but i still like him, even tough he takes on this tough, ass-hole sorta role. he is only a douche bag when people do things he has said not to do. he made a girl cry today, but that was mostly her fault because she brought a glass jar (not allowed!) into the room, dropped it and it shattered all over the floor where we practice and are constantly in bare feet. the no-glass thing has been reiterated daily! i mean, c'mon! i honestly can't wait for bikram to go off on someone wearing green, because people do every day and he asks us not to every day.
so clearly you can see that my struggle is with other people, and not bikram or really craig. bikram's teaching is growing on me, because he tells funny stories and makes me laugh a lot. he does yell at people, but that is only when he corrects them once, twice, and they keep doing it wrong while standing right in front of him. i was really affected by 2 women next to me during the introductions, who were writing notes like "im so bored kill me!!!" while a man was talking about his non-Hodgekins Lymphoma going into remission and chemo therapy and he was crying because he came SO near death. i wanted to yell at those women! people here are still so rude to each other and want to fight craig and bikram over everything, but i just need to realize they are detracting from their own experience and not let them affect mine.
at least i lucked out and have a cool roommate. her name is Charm and she is Indian but grew up in singapore. she treats bikram as a guru and explains to me things about india and indian culture, which has helped me understand bikram a lot better.
i'm not too sore yet, but my soreness is in weird places - the outsides of my calf muscles, and the muscles that cover my rib cage between my scapulae and my hip. those have even started cramping up during standing bow, fun! and my lower spine aches all the time, and i've even started developing visible bruises on my spine, which is strange. but at least a mirror hasn't fallen on me yet :-)

the beginning of posture clinic

Today we started the first of many posture clinic sessions. bikram sat in a lawn chair and watched as each person said the dialogue in the microphone to 4 demonstrators. i was about the 12th in line to go and we feeling pretty okay about it. then the first guy choked, then the second and third. i started freaking out. before i knew it, it was my turn. i introduced myself and as i turned around, i noticed craig (director of teacher training) standing there ready to demonstrate. as i began, he started making faces, held his hands and arms wrong, and exaggerated all the corrections i gave him. i tried the best i could, and then said in the microphone "if you think this is hard sir then just wait until we get to the 2nd part of awkward pose." he laughed, i laughed, i dont remember if bikram laughed, but then craig left and i continued. i got all the way through the posture, but i don't even remember what i said. bikram said "dat was okay" and then told a story but i dont remeber what it was about. something involving the goatskin carpet in his bentley.

then i demonstrated as my roommate delivered. I also demonstrated for Erika from Corvallis, and she did perfect, but bikram was mean and i could tell she REALLY took it to heart. Last was a woman who has been an ER doctor for 25 years and she was shaking the entire time. it was amazing to see a woman whose job is saving lives at critical times get so scared. her job is life and death, and bikram is just a man like any other she has saved in the hospital.

Tonight's class was okay, except the fasteneres they installed are coming out of the walls so the mirros are falling again. And also, the fire alarm went off at 2am this morning, then over the PA system they told us in every language possible, 3 times, that everything was okay.

the 3rd day

today, rageshri's morning class and lecture were cancelled because they were busy safe'ifying the mirrors (so they wouldn't fall on us any more). so we took that time to study outside in the sun. that's ron from the john's landing studio on the left, and justin from fremont leading us through it.
rageshri gave us an abridged version of her lecture, then bikram showed us some crazy shit with his stomach. more introductions too, and we're still not all the way done.
bikram's teaching style still irritates me, and the slippery carpet is the bain of my existence, but im sure i will grow to love them soon. in final savasana, bikram played a song from his CD called "i'm lonely" and everyone just started laughing. it was a nice release after class.

the 2nd day

Today was the day we met bikram. he came to us wearing all white, and told us a story about something i can't remember but included how many celebrities he has helped. then he said he hadn't even begun and said hello and welcomed us. then he kept us for 2 hours longer than craig had indicated, and i got up to pee once i couldn't hold it any longer, which meant i was the first recipient of the 'cork' comment. holding your pee for that long is bad for you though!

then we started the introductions. Bikram came wearing his silver speedo and yes Chrissy, it was everything i imagined and more. there are people here from dozens of countries - japan, singapore, korea, thailand, france, england, australia, new zealand, south africa, zimbabwe, canada, it's crazy! tons of people from vancouver. a few people cried delivering their stories - one woman was addicted to crack for 3 years and kicked the habit a year ago, one girl lost her boyfriend and dad in a car accident, two people were in motorcycle accidents... i could go on and on. this one beautiful, tall, blonde skinney australian girl got up and said "i've been practicing yoga for 8 years, and this is the only kind that gave me tits and ass!" at least she was honest!

then was class. the system we have now is that we have conference rooms on the 2nd floor to change and leave our things. all the elevators except for one are under construction (and there are 25 floors of about 1000 guests so the lines are HEINOUS after class/lecture). we have to cover ourselves when walking around the hotel though - apparently someones shakti top offended some old ladies who live in the hotel. anyway, the class. ugh the class i should say. this was the first time they had mats in the room so we rearranged a few times. there were people 3" away from me on every side. the mirrors started fogging up so we couldn't see anything. the micophone broke so we couldn't hear bikram. bikram's dialogue was slow and disjointed and after EVERY posture he asked us which one was next and what set we were on. the carpets are brand new and slippery so when i bent my knee for triangle pose my foot went straight out and i fell. one of the mirrors fell off the wall. and the entire time they didn't turn on the heaters - at first i felt kinda chilled but after awkward i was drenched, had sweat dripping from my shorts and my finger tips were pruney. the humidity was ridiculous. i finished an entire nalgene before the class was over and i hardly ever have to drink water and i was parched after class. have i complained enough?? i tried to keep my peace and my meditation the entire time but when bikram was asking us questions every couple minutes and telling us to look at people i just couldn't. the class didn't feel too hard, and at least the humidity made me super duper limber, but i looked at the clock and it took us over 2 hours. i am so tired already and it's only 8pm and we just had one class today. i am so nervous for what its going to be like when we have to practice in the morning and the night, and when we get to the dialogue that i don't know yet so i'll be studying more, and have to deliver those postures, and deal with late night lectures! i am psyching myself out. also, we have class saturday mornings every week with craig.

i just need to remind myself that this is my experience and my practice and i should leave all this shit behind me, but sometimes that just seems impossible!

yay hawaii!

The Ilikai, the studio and my new friend

The Ilikai, the studio and my new friend

the second day...

So this is the beginning of my second full day in Hawaii. Yesterday, I walked up and down Waikiki Beach. I lathered myself in SPF 60 sunblock, and still got burned! But my burns are in the oddest places – the tops of my fingers, the front of my neck, and my wrist where my hair-ties live. I chatted and swam for a while with a girl I met named Marie who is visiting here from Birmingham, England.
Afterwards, I wandered over to the Ilikai to check things out. I was poking around the studio they just finished building for us – it smells so new! And they had the heaters going, so now I know I won’t have to be worried about getting chilled during my practice, thank goodness. I’ll post some photos here. So as I was looking around, I met a handful of people who are from all over, along with a guy who owns a studio here in Honolulu and one in Chicago – he’s going to be one of our teachers too. I also met Ron, the Portlander from the John’s Landing studio. We met another student from Milwaukee, Wisconsin named Carrie. There are no bikram studios where she lives, so she has been practicing off the Bikram CD for over a year now. We had a drink at the bar, then took a walk to the closest shopping center to get some necessities. Our experience there really opened my eyes to the different backgrounds everyone coming to training will have. There was Ron, a 50 year old type A engineer who was carefully calculating out all his expenses, and Carrie, a 30 year old doctor’s wife who spent $350 on a pair of sunglasses, and then there was me. It’s very cool that people can be so different and still have the yoga in common.
Carrie got bumped into a suite with a beachside view, so she invited me to stay in her room for the night instead of my hostel. I said goodbye to my beloved loud Australian girls and headed for the Ilikai. It was the best nights sleep I’d had in 4 nights, but I keep waking up at 7am because I’m not quite used to the time difference.
Check-in is only a few hours from now, and I’m excited! I’ve heard that they have been putting 4 people in the rooms instead of the promised 2, and there aren’t kitchens in all the rooms. Hopefully I’ll have a kitchen, and a bed, and maybe some closet space and the rest will work itself out.
All the pictures I’ve taken so far are on my flickr page.

finally i'm here

after much freaking and stressing out, i finally made it to honolulu. the trip was difficult to say the least.
right now, i'm staying at a hostel right on waikiki beach. all i can tell about my roommates for these 2 nights is that they're australian, and they like to yell drunkenly from the balcony at 4am. they seem like a lot of fun though.

today i am going to explore waikiki as much as possible, and hopefully meet up with the other oregonians. i'll write more about it later tonight and post more photos on my flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/erinshawaiipix/