My Week in Yoga: Hot Hot Heat

Summer well and truly came to London this week. The mercury hit at least 30c every day and was only a few degrees below that at night. I know most people would be rejoicing at this, but I am a born and bred Brit meaning that grey days and jumpers are part of my DNA. I do not cope well with the heat. I especially do not like to practice yoga in the heat. In fact,I will go as far as to say that I despise hot yoga. Which is exactly what non-hot yoga becomes when you are practicing in your non-air-conditioned Victorian terrace at this time of year. So the past few weeks self-practice biased schedule gave way to a primarily class based week. 

Monday:  

45min flow class at work. This is the first time I’ve made it to this class since early April and it was just a delight to be back. The teacher is the one I wrote about here with whom I first fell in love with vinyasa, and who loves a drill. And boy did she remind me this! Side planks, forearm planks, all sorts. All building up to pincha. I caught one with some decent airtime, but generally this was a kicking up flail-fest.

With hindsight, I realise I was afraid to fall in front of a crowd I know so well, and went into back-bend mode. Isn’t it remarkable how both the environment and your perception of it can have such a huge impact? And that the way you let it impact you often means that the thing you were most afraid of becomes inevitable?! 

Tuesday: 

60min Iyengar class at work. Again, I haven’t made it to an Iyengar class since April. And again, it was amazing. The thing that really sets Iyengar apart for me is the specificity of the cues and the transformational result of long holds. If you want to understand a pose, listen to an Iyengar teacher cueing you in it for two minutes. Listen to your body experiencing it for two minutes. It will add a whole other dimension to your practice, I promise.

Wednesday: 

It was already 25c when my alarm went off at 5.45am for a pre-work practice. That is too hot my friends! So yep, I turned it off and went back to sleep. So this became an unplanned, but very welcome rest day.

Thursday: 

60min evening Rocket class plus 30mins messing around once I got home. Mainly working on wild-thing-wheel-wild-thing transitions and lotus as we just got into those in the class and I wanted to spend some more time on them.

Friday: 

60min evening Rocket class. I think I did more bunny hops in this class that I have ever done in my whole life. And I was actually getting home hang time by the end of the class! #NoPracticeNoMiracles right?!

Saturday:

60min vinyasa flow class. As per last week, the teacher gave lots of space for trying our own variations so I got a chance to work on my elephant-trunk to astavakrasana to EPK2 to chinstand sequence again as well as some pinchas. Then spent 30min flowing myself that evening with the summer rain as a backdrop. 

Sunday:

40min morning self-practice at home. A mixed but well balanced bag, working on some sequencing for my upcoming classes (eek!) next Sunday. Then an extra 20min of strength and stretch work in the evening, because I wasn’t quite done with my week in yoga after all.

• Self-Practice: 2hrs 
• Dynamic Classes: 3hrs 45min  
• Flex Focused Classes: 1hr
• TOTAL: 6hrs 45min