For my Pilates class tonight, I had a real workout. I was the only one to show up tonight and so my teacher, Joey, took this opportunity to show me flow yoga. You see, I am a big fan of working on “core” in yoga. This is the strengthening of your abdomen and back muscles. Because I constantly request a hard workout, I was shown one tonight.

In flow yoga, you move from position to position while breathing. On your drawn in breath, you perform one pose. And on the exhalation, you move to the next pose. Together, these poses are called a Vinyasa.

Joey felt that a warm environment would help loosen and stretch the muscles. So he turned off the ceiling fans and the air conditioner. Now, I didn’t mind that so much. But I do question how much warmer my muscles were. There is not that much range in muscle temperature. Too cold and you experience hypothermia and die. Too warm and your brain cooks and you die.
Anyways, back to the sweat…

We started out with 5 Sun Salutations called Surya Namaskara A. We then moved on to the next more complicated series called Surya Namaskara B. And, after that we moved to different stretches and poses.

This was the most I have ever sweated. Not like its an accurate measurement, but it felt like I sweated 1/2 liter of water in an hour. I went through the following stages of sweat:

• my arms and legs are getting sweaty now
• ok, they are covered in sweat
• my mat is starting to get wet
• now my chest is starting to sweat
• I am damp now
• my shirt is starting to stick
• gah, every part of the shirt is stuck to me
• I feel like I participated in a wet tee-shirt contest and all I got was this soaking wet t-shirt

I was certianly not ready for that. And if you think that yoga can not be strenuous, then you must try this out!

Besides being draining, my real problem was controlling my breath. I am not used to breathing like this. I started to breath in and out a little more quickly than I should have. Which caused me to hyperventilate. You can catch your breath in the last down dog pose of the series, but it is hard to breath normally in this unnatural position. Also, in the poses, you are stretching out. You are supposed to use your breath to help stretch out. And this extra effort is taxing you and making it more difficult to catch your breath.

The other time I was alone with Joey, we did a more strenuous version of Pilates. And on that day, I had a pretty wicked charley horse. I was limping for a couple of days afterward. Between those two days, I think that this day was the toughest.