My First Class as a Yoga Instructor!!!

Ulises, the owner of the Bikram Yoga Studio in Mexico City is letting some of us teaching our first yoga class in his studio. Teaching a class is the last step to close the circle that started 9 weeks ago. I got my schedule and I am teaching my first class this coming Wednesday at 8am (maybe not the best time for a night person like me:-).

If any of you are in Mexico City and available at that time, you are more than welcome to join us for this important event (check everything about the studio location and bikram yoga in Mexico in http://www.bikramyogamexico.com).

I am really excited about this. Ulises wants me to teach the class in Spanish so I will have to translate real-time since I learned to teach in english. I am sure everything will be fine, but until Wednesday, let me have my balls in my neck.

I will also teach a second class on Friday at 6:15pm (that is one of the busiest classes in the studio). I will let you know how it goes. So far, I have decided that I am going to teach all my classes in my tiger shorts… and I am going to name myself as “El Tigre de Galicia” (The Tiger of Galicia).

I will let you know on Wednesday how it goes…

Leaving Las Acapulcas…

Sunday was the chosen day to leave the city /hotel /room that has been my home for the last 9 weeks.  I have met sooo many great people here that I had to spend a huge amount of time with farewell lunches, farewell dinners, farewell hugs and farewell beers. 

Those who know me well know that I really really hate farewells. I think it is the combination of the sadness of the moment and our (at least my) inability to express that sadness with accurate words (and the nervousness that it implies). With close friends, our words underrepresent our sadness. With acquiantances, they normally overrepresent it.

Anyway, so I spent the weekend half and half celebrating the end of the training (committing all the sins that we have avoided during the last 9 weeks) and saying bye to a lot of great people.

The operational part was less painful than expected: I was able to pack all my crap in only a couple of hours (although now I am coming back with two more bags than when I arrived), the trip to the airport was short, non-delayed and inexpensive. They cancelled my initial flight to Mexico City (on Sunday morning) but that was OK cos it gave me 4 additional hours to say bye to the hotel beach and pools.

On the personal side, I found it very hard to say bye to people I have been so close to for the last 2 months. I am going to miss some of them very very much. The good news is that now I have yoga friends all over the world so a yoga world tour sometime in the future could be a good idea:-)

In terms of facts and times, I left the hotel lobby at 3:17pm, I landed in Mexico city at 6:10pm and arrived to the hotel at 7:30pm. I plan to stay here for a week before my return to NYC next Monday.

Cheers,

GA

Graduation day!!!!!

Hello, I am pleased to announce that I am already a certified Bikram Yoga Instructor!!!!

After 9 weeks of pain and glory we had on Friday our very expected Graduation day. I dressed up for the occasion and wore long pants for the first time in 9 weeks:-) [in the picture with Nora, an austrian sweet girl from my posture clinic group]

 

It was a 3-hour event with speeches from the very best of Bikram yoga… Craig, Emy, Rajashree, Ipqar (Bikram’s new business partner- more about that in another post) and Bikram himself. At the end of the event, Craig called, one by one, the names of each of the 300 new teachers and Bikram gave personally the Diploma to each of us. I have a paper copy of a nice picture with him and the diploma, but here is a not-so-good-one to calm you curiosity down:-)

 

I have sooo many things to tell and write in order to wrap up this amazing experience. I would leave all that for soon-to-come posts. In the meantime, I just wanted to let you all know that I feel very happy about the whole experience. I have a deep feeling of accomplishment and of devotion towards Bikram and the rest of the crew.

More to come…

Ode to the Diet Coke

I know that soda is not good for my body. I know that the CO2 in the soda is bad for my bones, stomach, etc, etc. And I know that I should be drinking something else more healthy in line with my new health lifestyle and diet.

I know all that. However, there is no bigger pleasure in life for me than drinking a icy diet coke after each of the yoga classes!!!!. I don’t know if it is the bubbles, or the secret formula, or my own brain, but I loooooove it.

As a result, I needed to write a post praising this amazing product (diet coke) as it is much better than diet pepsi, coke zero or sex on the beach. I dixit… Diet Coke rules!!!!

Last Yoga Class of the Training!!!

On Thursday evening, we had the last yoga class of the training.

It was the 94th time (+ one make-up class that I had to do last Sunday) that we spend 90+ minutes in the hot room doing our 26+2 postures (2 set each). I was planning to do it without water but, once I arrived to the torture chamber and noticed how freaking hot it was and how sore my body was, I decided to drink like crazy.

As usual, the second to last class is taught by Rajashree and the last one by Bikram. I didn’t feel very well but I had a very good class due to the high energy in the room. Half due to Bikram and his amazing commanding voice and half due to amount of energy brought by my classmates excited about finishing the yoga class.

Anyway, I wore my tiger shorts for the occasion!!! (what less!). Here is a picture to commemorate my last class. I am there with Dylan, indeed the first person that I met from the training (we flew together from Mexico City).

As you can see, my 6-pack is still in progress but you can see the improvement from the beginning of the training (I didn’t know getting a 6-pack took sooo long:-)

Anyway, I survived my last class and I also accomplished one of the goals I had for this training… getting a picture with Bikram (picture taken after class outside the hot room).

 

So bottomline, I am very proud of myself and the rest of my classmates, I would date myself if I were another person (girl or gay guy) and I am looking forward graduation tomorrow morning…

Viva yo!!!!

My First Yoga Class without a Drop of Water

As you know, Bikram yoga is done in a very hot room so, in each class, it is normal to sweat like crazy (2-3 liters of juicy sweat). To prevent deshydration, it is important to drink a lot of water and electrolytes before, during and after the class.

I follow this drinking guideline verbatim, so I drink these days 8-10 liters of water/electrolytes per day. In each yoga class, I drink 2-3 liters with no apparent effort, from any human position and situation. These amazing superpowers led Craig to give me the nickname of Aquaman (that was before Bikram called me Mr. Pregnant;-).

At one point, I noticed that my inmense love for water during the class was almost an addiction. Even during postures, I was thinking all the time about when my next water break was going to be. I deeply believed that I needed that huge amount of water during the class to survive the class.

Yesterday, Casper and Jeanne challenged me just before the evening class, to stay the 90 minutes of class without drinking any water at all. At first, I was as reluctant about it as a cocaine addict about getting into a detox hospital. However, they did a great job in convincing my highly rational and sophisticated masculine mind with the words: “don’t you have balls to do it or what?”. As a good man from the Basque Country, I have enough balls even to cut my balls if needed, so I accepted the water challenge.

I would lie if I said that I didn’t suffer during the class without water but I survived the whole class (taught by Bikram) without drinking. This showed me the big difference between NEED and WANT. I thought that I NEEDED the water to do the class but I DON’T NEED it at all. I just WANT it (with all my heart).

If in life, we were able to differentiate the cases when we really NEED something from the ones when we only WANT that something, we would be able to stop being slaves of our weak minds, increase our self-control and go through life much happier.

Said, I am freaking drinking the next class (but just because I want to 🙂

Swimming with Dolphins

On Sunday, to celebrate our weekly day of vacation, we went to Acapulco’s water park to swim with dolphins. It is always said that dolphins are the smartest animals so I was really looking for an opportunity like this one to interact with them. The price per person for 1-hour swim with the dolphins was 1,300 pesos (US$130) so the expectations were high.

It looks like all men in the training are scared of dolphins because only women joined. I had the good luck to enjoy this activity with 5 really sweet girls from the training (as you know, I am always suffering and sacrificing myself;-). From left to right, they are Bonnie from Australia (remember her from my scuba diving last week), Colleen from Oregon, Jeanne from Phillipines, SuperGuille from Heaven, AnnaMaria from Hungary and Anastasia from Russia.

You can see all the pictures that I took of the event in my Flickr site (the link is on the right side of the blog). For this post, I want only to highlight my 4 main learnings of the day:

(1) Dolphins’ skin is softer than the ass of a baby

We swam with them a lot and touch them. I was surprised by how soft their skin is. Next time, I am going to ask them for their secret an create a skincare product for woman with that. They are so soft that you want to hug them. However, I hated the part when they tell you to kiss the dolphin in the mouth (can you believe it?). When my turn came, I looked at the dolphin at saw two problems with the mouth kiss: First, he was a male and second, he was a dolphin. So our love was doomed since the first moment so I decided to change at the last moment the mouth kiss by a cheek kiss as you can see in the picture.

Posture Clinic is Over!!!!!

Hi all!!! Just a quick note that yesterday we finished Spine Twisting Pose and with it the posture clinic of the training. This has been long and painful but now I feel as relieved as after giving birth to a baby with a big head, sharp horns and that is coming perpendicular wise (and I am just a guy:-)

In the last 7 weeks, we have covered the 26 postures in the posture clinic and for 26 times, I had to tell the dialog of each of them in front of the teachers and the rest of the group. It has been an amazing practice for my public speaking skills, my english communication skills and my patience skills (in addition to teach each posture, I had to watch each posture taught 40 times).

Along the way, I received valuable feedback after each posture to improve my voice projection, connection with the students and presence and posture on stage. I have learned a lot but I couldn’t wait to see it over:-) Now that it is over, we are going to have more available time for Bikram’s lectures and also for visiting guests. In addition, I hope to have some mock class exercises to link several poses together and see how it feels to teach a real class.

Finally, I wanted to talk about my posture clinic group. This group of 15-20 people have always been with me in all posture clinic sessions. I have got to know and love each of them. It is a group of amazing people. So here it goes….

HAIL GROUP 1!!!!!!!!

Left to right and top to bottom, SuperG, Danielle, Simone, Laura, Edy, Manali, Melissa, Sean, Rea, Debbie, Nora, Alison, Oscar. Bottom, Danielle, Kylie and Allison.

Big ausence in the picture of great Henry Abuuuuuda!!!

Ex Poena Adveho Formositas

[Thanks to Kirk for letting me take a picture of his cool tatoo]

I am just at the end of week 6 of the training and this latin phrase really summarizes how I feel right now. For those, like me, whose latin is a bit forgotten and not in shape, the phrase means: “Beauty comes from within pain”.

Before you call 911 to tell them that I have gone crazy, let me explain myself:

Sometime this week, I felt at my really lowest both physically and mentally. On the mental side, I got really pissed off last Friday when they made us stay in the conference room until 4:30am watching some indian TV series from the 70s. I found it (and still find it) very stupid, especially while I was dying the following day in the yoga with only 2 hours of sleep. So mentally that was the straw that killed the camel (since the beginning, I have found that sometimes the way they treat us here is not the most appropriate for adult people). On the physical side, I got a bad sore throat early this week and for 2 days each yoga class felt really hell. So you can imagine that I was hating the rest of the world and wanted to kill someone.

However, in the last couple of days there has been a turning point and I now feel much better, optimistic, happy, ungrumpy and ready for the weekend. On the physical side, some of my friends here really took care of me and now I feel like a bull again (and I am touched by their tenderness). My last couple of yoga classes, I felt really good and I have noticed how much I have advanced in my practice lately. On the mental side, there are still a lot of things here that I don’t understand, don’t share and plainly find stupid. However, I have also realized that net-net, my experience here is so amazingly positive and life-changing that I shouldn’t get angry by those little stupid things. As I cannot forgive things I consider stupid, I have decide to forget about them (forgotten, non forgiven:-)

Anyway, so now I know that the pain I have had some times in the first 6 weeks of the training, explain a lot of the positive feelings and thoughts that I have right now. I have definitely passed the turning point and I hope to really enjoy the last 3 weeks to the maximum. I have made an incredible group of friends, my body feels great, my mind feels great and I have learned that bones are floating in a sea of fascia (we had a lecture on fascia and it was very interesting;-)

For those of you who find crazy that I complain and talk about suffering and pain while living in a resort in Acapulco, I would like to say that (1) everything is relative, (2) things are different from the inside than from the outside and (3) you will get crazier when you check out my AMAAAAZING skin tan and lovely figure 😛

Sore Throat comes, Sore Throat goes

The good thing of writing in the blog with some days of delay is that I can tell complete stories, start to finish, since they are over before I have written about them:-)

On Sunday evening, after coming back from scuba diving, I got a very bad sore throat. Monday and Tuesday were really bad for me. If just doing the yoga class is hard enough, imagine how it is like when you have a red, infected throat and fever (for those of you who are thinking why I went to yoga being sick, things work here like a military bootcamp. Unless you are dying, you are asked to get in the hot room with the rest – even if the only thing you are able to do is lay down and think bad things about the staff members:-)

I wanted to sincerely thank to all the angels that have taken care of me during the last couple of days. Especially Allison, Jeff, Jeanne and Tanya. It is good to fall sick when there are people who worry about you and take care of you don’t you think?;-). On Tuesday, Allison (mother Allison from now on) made a natural medicine cure for me based on hot water, lime juice, ginger and salt. She also brought me enough limes and ginger for me to prepare it for the rest of the week. It really worked!!!. I won’t definitely ask for it in a night club (it doesn’t taste that great) but it cured me very fast. Today (Wednesday) I have been much better and I am almost recovered.

In comparison with Monday and Tuesday, now the classes look really easy and pleasant!!!;-)