It's been a bit of a weekend, to say the least. Warning, this is a long one...
Late on Friday I got an email from Sarah, reminding me that I had signed up for a mysore class the next morning. If I'm honest, I had completely forgotten. Saturday was already looking busy - I was meant to be at the Union Chapel to watch a friend play at a thing called Daylight Music, and then I was going to meet my friend Lily, who's in the process of graduating from YogaCampus, one of the courses I'm looking at for my own training, to talk about her experience and so on. I had also planned to start the morning off with an early Pilates class.
However, things don't always go to plan, and this weekend was certainly an example of that. I woke up at three in the morning on Saturday with a stinking migraine, which is really not normal for me. I went downstairs to check and the gas hob had been left on. Despite the fact there was no gas coming out of it, muggins here immediately panicked and 3:30 found me sitting in the garden on the phone to 111 with the windows wide open. The phone conversation ended up in them saying they thought it was probably just a migraine, me promising to go to A&E to get checked out (how would I get there at that time?), and then me waking my father up to check his snoring was snoring and not him being unresponsive. Suffice to say, he was thrilled.
All of this kerfuffle meant that I woke up on Saturday morning still feeling pretty grim. I didn't go to Pilates, and got to mysore (thanks to a helpful lift) at 10 (the class was meant to run 9-11). I really didn't know what to expect - I've never done mysore before. Mysore is essentially self-practice yoga. Unlike a normal yoga class, where you've got a teacher leading you all through things at the same pace, you do your own practice, so you're running through Surya Namaskar A and B and then doing standing and seated postures. You turn up whenever you like.
Sarah had me do five repetitions of A and B, and then supported me through the standing and seated postures. They're the ones I'm going to have to really work on - for the life of me I wouldn't know where to start! She had me do things like stand by the wall and use my fingertips to help with balance postures, which I've never done before (but was needed, as I am terrible at them). I wasn't expecting it to be quite as challenging as it is but when you're doing your own practice and really working, it pushes you further. I'm not sure I've ever sweated that much in an exercise class - I'm a terrible hair-sweater but have never seen it all over my arms before!
At one point Sarah said to me 'your yoga practice needs to be about strength and fitness' - she did add that the lovely rest of it comes into play too, but that because of my tendencies to do things like flare ribs, not tuck tailbone under, my tight upper back and my historic sacral muscle issues, I really need to bring that into it. Solid points.
Anyway, I thought I'd be there till 11, but when I finally exited class (bearing in mind there is no clock in a yoga studio) it was quarter to 12, and I was due to be watching my friend Tanya play piano in 15 minutes on the other side of London. So the zen quickly zoomed away and the stress returned. I hurried as much as I could and got there a full hour late. How embarrassing! It was a lovely experience and I did get to hear some of her playing, which was fabulous, but I did feel like a total fool. Yoga can carry you away sometimes...
Later, after coffee with Tanya, I went to meet up with Lily. Lily is just graduating from the course that's my top choice for teacher training, Yoga Campus' 18 month 320 hour one. We talked yoga for a few hours (no one in my day-to-day life wants to wang on about it as much as I do!) and I came away feeling really inspired and positive. Of course I mustn't get my heart set on it, but I do feel like it's most likely the one for me now, although I do have another option as backup. Lily's great, she's very down to earth and super chill, and you can really talk about anything with her
The next morning I had an early tech and rehearsal for a performance my choir was giving, so I hurried down to the station but just missed the train I wanted. With 15 minutes to kill, I went to Sainsbury to grab a sandwich and drink for later. Unfortunately, as I paid, I put my phone down next to the till, and then forgot about it. Just a few minutes later, I realised what I'd done and ran back, but unfortunately some unscrupulous arse pocketed it. He turned it off, so I knew it was nicked, because I had a pass code on it, and full charge. A lovely woman let me call Vodafone to get it blocked, and then I bumped into a police officer getting his breakfast, and he took a crime report and will be taking a statement from me this week.
After all of this, I was running extremely late for my performance on Sunday, and had cried a few times with shock and upset. I got there ten minutes before it started, sweaty and gross, and quickly changed and put make up on. The performance itself went fine, although I felt very flustered and was unable to settle into it - at one point I accidentally sang a note I couldn't hit after going up too high (and not being warmed up didn't help) and sounded like a strangled cat. No1curr, as usual, apart from me. Ironically, the talk that day was on imposter syndrome and feeling like a fraud...
The rest of the day felt pretty frantic, as I had booked a yin class at The Yoga Hutch for 3pm, so couldn't stay long at the pub, which is where I'd normally unwind. It was my first full yin class - Tammy often does some yin as part of her vinyasa class on Wednesdays, but I'd never actually just done that and nothing else. Yin is all about releasing into connective tissue, and about letting yourself go. The first time I did it I cried at the end, and although I didn't do that this time it was definitely a really enjoyable experience.
I think that the yin is partly what inspired me to think about teaching - it gave me a different perception of yoga, about the roundedness a practice can have, about what I myself can bring to it as a teacher with my own health experiences. We also did half an hour of yoga nidra (sleep yoga, essentially a sort of guided visualisation, as far as I can tell) which I struggled a bit with, mainly because half the rest of the class kept breaking into snoring, which put me off a bit! One lady, a new mum, completely conked out and spent the full half an hour snoring very loudly - not her fault at all, but I just couldn't quite get past that into that 'other' space you can sometimes manage in yoga.
Yesterday I had workplace vinyasa with Tammy. It was actually really busy, six of us, and one of the best ones I've done with her for pure focus. The flow was amazing - I set an intention to use my ujayi breath (it's like throat-breathing, you're breathing in and out through your nose and trying to make a sound like waves rushing on the shore) throughout and it seemed to really help with my practice. However, it did make me a bit emosh - I sniffled at Tammy afterwards and then felt very dizzy, probably from the circular breathing changing my oxygen intake (need to do some proper research on that!). It was great, though.
In the evening I finally made it back to Body Pump, which I have missed - the teacher, Annie, is fabulous and so focused on form. I had a break for a while due to a cycling injury but in recent weeks I've just been too knackered to go, if I'm honest, since starting the tough Sunday night astanga class. But it's really clear to me that I can't just rely on doing a lot of yoga to keep myself healthy. Exercise needs to be balanced, you need to build strength in different ways - so I need to make sure Pump, Pilates, swimming and cycling are still in my routine, and that I'm eating well too.
So much to think about!