mavromatim

Hi and thank you for your detailed response! You ask what has changed, why am i un able to keep the troublesome thoughts at bag anymore. The first 2 weeks of my class were dedicated to survival in the hot room, because the practice seemed very very hard for me at first. I kept thinking of how to survive throughout the practice, for the heat seemed just too much for me and the poses complicated (I’m that sort of person who can’t touch his toes, despite having done a lot of sports in my life). This way there was no way for my mind to wander off anywhere from the subject of enduring the present moment. Now I’ve been doing bikram for over a month and am no longer afraid of the heat and complicated positions: I try to focus on doing the pose correctly instead and this is where my troublesome thoughts begin coming back.

I don’t exactly understand what you mean by “script-recital class”. We have a fabulous instructor that does all the talking (as it is done in most bikram yoga studios) and she doesn’t get repetitive, she always finds different ways of giving instructions, it’s not as if she were reciting the same piece of text every day.

I tried to to follow your advice on breathing today during my morning class –  and a good sound piece of advice it is! I am thankful for it 🙂 But focusing on breathing in the way you described is, I must admit, complicated. Probably it will take me weeks  or months to get there. I tried to focus on breath every time my thoughts started wandering away – and, well, somehow it worked, because it is hard to think of something else when you have to think of the way you breathe! My anxieties are deep-seated and I think it will take a lot of time for my thoughts to stop going round in circles, but I hope the technique will take effect in due course. Thank you enormously for this valuable piece of advice!

PS – btw, what is the dialogue you refered to? Is it the information the instructor gives during class or a different source of information?