Bonfire of my Vanities

[sistermagpie]

Happy birthday franlet!!

There are some things that are better in theory than they are in practice. Apparently Bikram Yoga is one of those things.

C in my dance class recommended this to me. See, I feel like I should really do yoga. I need to find a yoga class I like. One of my ballet teachers is always saying, "It's all yoga!" and all that. Plus I injured my leg, like, a year ago and it still hasn't stretched out again. Bikram Yoga used to be called Hot Yoga because you do it in a room heated to about 108 degrees. Like I said, in theory this is great. I know my muscles stretch more when it's warm, and lots of sweating sounds like a cleansing experience etc. So yesterday I got up early and went down there to take a class.

In the beginning I was all show-offy. I've never taken a yoga class but I can stand on one foot and I know how to stretch, so I'm all proud of myself for how well I'm doing. And then I start getting dizzy. Ohhhhhh so dizzy. With the colored spots. Everytime I tried to do something I had to stick my head between my knees and hope I didn't a) faint or b) throw up. I have really low blood pressure and I guess that was part of it, but oh god, I felt like such a wimp. I kept thinking about all the things people had to experience that was worse than this. Like people in concentration camps--what was I complaining about? Only I wound up just thinking how if the Nazis knew about this they'd probably have forced people to do it because it was hell.

I really don't like taking exercise classes that I don't enjoy because I like exercising (that is, I like dancing so anything that's sort of like that I like). Got home, took two showers, then developed a horrible headache, I guess because I was dehydrated. So all my plans about an early exercise class giving me an early start was pretty much shot. Whine whine whine. Does this happen to those women on Sex in the City? And then I forgot--FORGOT--that QaF was on last night. Dammit. Oh, and when I tried to clean my room I realized that that really important letter I sent to the bank a few weeks ago has in fact been sitting on my chair between two InStyle magazines. Go me.

Turns out my roommate has taken this class several times and she felt really good after it--except once when she turned green.

Had a facial on Saturday--a collagen one that's very experience but very very nice. Except that they have to use this machine thingie where they stick one part under your shoulder and rub your face with the other part--something to do with ions. It makes your mouth taste like metal and I could feel the electricity or whatever it was under my shoulder. Afterwards the person is like, "Oooh, what did you do to your shoulder? It's all red," and I'm like, "Uh, that would be the part where you've been shocking me for many minutes." Came home and realized there was an actual BURN there! Ah well, beauty knows no pain. Any day now I expect the beauty to show up. Any day. Not hear yet, though.

My, what a lot of empty blathering about vain little me. Heh. Oh, and I think I finally got more licensed character work. Does anybody Italian on my flist know of a show called Winx? It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen, kind of a mixture of Star Wars, HP, fairies, Sweet Valley High, Digimon and...just about anything else I can think of.

Comments

[lotesse]

Hi. I'm delurking. been reading your journal for a while for the shiny meta-ness, and just got an lj.
What you're talking about sounds a lot like what my yoga studio calls Vinyasa: fast, dynamig, yang yoga. Don't touch the stuff myself, though my sister swears by it. Me, I like the long, slow, lying on your back and lettling openess sink into you yoga. Throwing up is more rarely an issue.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hi! Congratulations on your shiny new lj.:-)

It's actually not very strenuous in terms of being fast-at least I don't think so (I don't have experience with other types). It's more, I guess, about holding the poses and you can be as extreme as you want. It's just that it's so hot that just standing up I was ready to pass out!

[shusu.livejournal.com]

Winx shows up dubbed on the latter part of Fox's Saturday lineup. And I completely agree. It is one weird chicken. I stopped watching after the first show, I was so bemused XD

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I watched several episodes the other day that the publisher sent and...uh...yeah. My writing partner couldn't keep the characters straight no matter what. I was a little better doing that but it was still confusing as anything. I liked the way they seemed to lose in every ep I saw.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

I always wanted to go yoga, but that particular method sounds awful. Just out of curiousity, have you been dancing all your life?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I have a videotape of yoga I've done sometimes and I'm thinking I should maybe just stick to that because this knocked me out for the whole weekend!

I haven't been dancing all my life (I took it when I was little but was never really serious or anything)--I basically decided I wanted to do it in college. I took a class then and the teacher had us read this book about how you didn't have to have a perfect body or start really young to be good--which I loved to read. The good thing about NYC is there are so many good classes and it's not unusual for adult non-professionals to take class too. You can find really good teachers for adults etc.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Winx? Not Witches? I don't have any idea... but I have friends who watch television more than me so I can ask.

And I didn't know you were into Digimon! Ahaha, I remember all that kiddie porn I read about Yamato angsting over his too tight boots...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's Witches in the original and for some reason they translated it as that? The girls actually are fairies anyway, but they call themselves Winx and they call the three villains, who are witches, the "Trix."

I haven't watched too much Digimon but I did a book for them once so I watched it for a while. I loved singing the theme song more than anything. Unfortunately Winx does not seem to have a very good theme/transforming song.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Maybe this (http://www.disney.it/Publishing/Witchmagazine)?

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

You should probably switch to "plain" (that is, Iyengar) Yoga. Your videotape is probably Iyengar or Anusara, which are pretty close. I think that all Bikram does is add the heat.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the yoga itself seemed fine-I even recognized some of the poses from the video...but the heat made more of a difference than I thought! I've heard the first class is the hardest, but we'll just see if I wind up at a second one ever. I definitely wasn't about to go to one today, I'll tell you that much.

[samaranth.livejournal.com]

Yoga is a Good Thing. But the yoga you have described sounds like a Bad Thing. Headaches, spots in the eyes and nausea. Yuck. {{{magpie}}} Obviously the conditions in the room were all wrong – a class where people go all pale and wobbly cannot be judged as successful.

Going to salons and being spoilt (in the acquiring beauty sense) is a Good Thing. But burns are Very Bad Things. Very Very Bad Things. Ouch!! I hope it’s not too severe, and that you are not planning to go back to that place again until they have overhauled all their electrical equipment and road-tested it on themselves first.

Winx. Hmm. I wonder how long it will be before they make their way here. All that girlpower. Can’t wait. :-D

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Some people love this kind of yoga--maybe the dizziness is something you work through? It's funny because there were a lot of other people in the class and they weren't all incredibly in shape, so I guess it can't be too bad.

The burn isn't bad, really--it's more just amazing that it was actually there! I mean, who expects to be burned in a facial? This kind of thing would probably never happen to Winx--oh yeah, just wait until you get it. See if you get make head or tails of it!

[lotesse]

Sometimes you do have to work through nausea with certain postures. Like, I've got this utter block on Triangle (can't remember the Sanskrit name) where it makes me feel vaguely ill just thinking about it. Or that could be the nasty cherry-thing disguised as a chocolate that I just ate ou of desperation. But anyway...when a certain posture causes you physical distress, it's because there's something there that you need to work through. So the solution to the discomfort is to do the posture as often as you can.
Urg. Don't you hate the way the world works sometimes?

[lotesse]

Sometimes you do have to work through nausea with certain postures. Like, I've got this utter block on Triangle (can't remember the Sanskrit name) where it makes me feel vaguely ill just thinking about it. Or that could be the nasty cherry-thing disguised as a chocolate that I just ate ou of desperation. But anyway...when a certain posture causes you physical distress, it's because there's something there that you need to work through. So the solution to the discomfort is to do the posture as often as you can.
Urg. Don't you hate the way the world works sometimes?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes! Definitely. It's weird because I don't know if the postures themselves were the problem--sometimes you can feel if it's the position and there's just toxins or something stuck in that muscle that need to come out. It was just frustrating because I almost couldn't get into any positions because I was so focused on how I was feeling--so it was maybe very psychological too. I was just freaking myself out