Week 3

The Group

320 students. We started with 322 but believe it or not two ladies already called it quits. Packed up, left their roommates and went home. This is surely not for everyone and if your not truly committed to Bikram Yoga you won’t last.

The average age of this group I would estimate on 34. There are about 70 men here. We have only few really young girls here fresh out of school or putting college on hold for a year to be here. Then there is a very big group of 30+ women with husbands and kids at home. I have been amazed how many moms are here with me it’s really nice.

The group is a mixture of cultures. Not by any means what I am used to in Germany where we are way more diverse than this because of adidas headquarters. This group must be 1/3 American. The other huge group comes from Canada. There are a hand full Aussies here and a hand full of Europeans. Then we have a lot of people from Asia as well.

A lot of the American students here are from LA and surroundings. Most of them go home after Saturday’s class and drive back up on Sunday night again. At first I thought that would be so great. But now into week three I have changed my mind. This process is rough, we have very little time to ourselves and we have a lot of material to study. It’s stressful. Braking away from the ‘compound’ in the weekend would make it hard to get back into the routine again.
Of course they don’t have to miss their family for 9 weeks and if my family were a two hours drive away from here I would drive home too. So I would never think I would say this but I am glad they are not two hours away so I can completely focus on my training and take care of just me.

Speaking of taking care of me. These past three weeks have shown me it is way easier for me to take care of the people around me than taking care of myself. Making others feel better, eat well, sleep well and love them endlessly is what I do every day when I am at home. Now I am the person who needs all that and there is only me who can give that to me. Bikram told us in the first week “ you can never really love somebody if you don’t know how to love yourself”. He followed that up with the next line: “you’ll never meet anybody else who loves himself as much as I do”. He’s got that right!

As in every group there are many different kind of people here. All sorts of stories are shared and some share more than you can ever wish for….

One guy here started practicing Bikram Yoga while he was in prison. He lived in Amsterdam and thought it would be a good idea to smuggle 66000 XTC pills to his home country and sell them there. Of course he never got to that last part and instead spend four and a half years behind bars. Somehow he got hold of Bikram’s beginning yoga book and started to practice. Soon enough he formed his little Bikram group behind bars. Now Bikram has changed his life and he can’t wait to teach and open his own studio.

Another girl here told me she is at this training to figure out if she wants to marry her long-term boyfriend. She is in her end thirties and has been with the guy for a long time. She has no sex-drive and hopes that this training will bring it all back and give here clarity. I am not making this up.

And then there is one of us who tragically lost her spouse and has two little kids at home. She gives the term ‘missing’ a whole new dimension. Her personal victory of this week was that she got through a class without tears.

There are also couples here. At least four of them are doing the training together. Some of them do a great job mixing with all of us singles and some just do everything together. They obviously share rooms but they also sit together in lectures and even practice next to each other twice a day. This intrigues me. I miss my husband and am so looking forward to seeing him again at the end of this but having him here would be so weird. Honestly this regime brings out the worst in all of us not the cute pretty side.

Roommate drama is in full gear too. None of us picked our roomies and they didn’t exactly use the ‘match.com’ format when they put us together. The things that some of the girls here have to deal with are just too much and three weeks in it starts to cause some friction, it’s good comedy.
This is my favorite one from this week; One of the girls here had her boyfriend drive up to visit this weekend. Instead of getting a room together in the hotel he just slept with her! There is not even 1 meter between the two beds!! Her roommate was really not too jazzed when she went up to her room to get something and found both of them naked in bed. They are both women in their 40’s not teenagers. Not very yoga etiquette.

Week three was rough. Study, anatomy, lectures and more study over the weekend.
The yoga twice a day is still fantastic and we have had some amazing guest teachers this week.

On to week four, Bikram will join us again this week…