Notes and Commentary from Mary C

Saturday, May 24 – 6:39 p.m.

Hello to all the BYB Yogis!

Week 7 was eventful and interesting. I joined many of my fellow yogis in the week 7 blues - intensely homesick, tired of the schedule, tired of the food, tired of the mind games, and just plain tired.

The week started last Sunday with a photo shoot of the whole group, outdoors. I don't know if the shots include the ocean, but we were arranged by group into a huge Om, and the photos were shot from the roof of the hotel. Should be interesting, but I doubt that we will be able to pick out individuals . . . except for Emily, who incurred Bikram's wrath and scorn during Half Moon pose recitation for her crewcut. In the group photo, she is wearing a fluorescent orange chin-length wig! I have some close-ups of her that day that you will see when we get home.

For the last ten days or so, we have been blessed with the presence of Joel (I never caught his last name), from Philadelphia. Bikram refers to him as Holy Man. He has been involved in Bikram yoga since the 1970's, and went to teacher training back at the very beginning. I was lucky enough to have him in posture clinic three times, and each time he imparted so much wisdom and grace. He has a humble and self-effacing presence. Because he was leaving today (Saturday, May 24), he said good-bye to us as a group yesterday afternoon before posture clinic. He has a wealth of stories and told us more of them. Craig just let him go on and on. At the end, he led us in the Hare Krishna chant, with clapping and back-up singers and dancing. It was a memorable and moving experience which I will never forget. I am very sad to see him go.

For the most part, all of the visiting teachers have been generous with their time, thoughtful and helpful with their comments in posture clinic, and those who have taught have delivered great classes. I have had or heard about only a few negative experiences, but one was particularly egregious. I didn't witness this, but Carla did in her posture clinic. A yogini in that group was delivering Head to Knee with Stretching, which is a long and complicated dialog to learn. The female teacher conducting that posture clinic thought she needed to be louder and more forceful, so she made her deliver the entire dialog again, while doing jumping jacks the entire time, and then made her do it a third time, also doing jumping jacks the entire time. The yogini persevered, but by the end, she was exhausted and crying, as were a number of others in the room.

On Thursday, Carla, Frank, Patrice and I had a very nice surprise at evening sign-in. Martha Williams sent down presents from her studio for each of us, which were waiting for us at the sign-in sheets. I mentioned at the beginning of this entry that we had the week 7 blues. Martha's thoughtfulness delivered a huge burst of love and energy at a time when we all needed it a lot. Thank you very much, Martha, for thinking of us and being so generous. It could not have come at a better time, especially because Bikram had taught 5:00 class that day and it was a very challenging and difficult class. Not since the first week of training have so many people had to leave the room. Vomiting was rampant, and some had to be carried out. At least one woman ending up having to get an IV.

Even with Bikram back, teaching longer classes and lecturing, we have still managed to keep up our blistering pace on dialog. On Friday, I delivered the last posture dialog, Spine Twisting pose. I had (and have) such a sense of elation and accomplishment. Many of the groups did not get to Spine Twisting pose on Friday, or if they did, not many people were able to finish it. Neither Carla nor Frank were able to do Spine Twisting yesterday. My group has been ahead for much of the last ten days, and I was determined to get it done on Friday. I know we still have challenges ahead in posture clinic; after all, we still have nine working days of lecture/posture clinic time left, and rumors are rampant about what may be in store for us. Whatever it is, I am confident about our ability to handle it.

So, because I have a weekend where I do not have to dedicate study time to learning dialog, I am taking the luxury of going outside the hotel bubble for dinner tonight with several friends who also delivered their final pose yesterday. This outing will be only my second one, other than the weekly shopping trips to Wal-Mart and Mega. Who would have thought such a simple thing could provide so much anticipation!

We really are in countdown mode. Not counting today, we have less than two weeks, only twelve days left until graduation and 19 yoga classes. That said, there are still lessons to be learned, experiences to be felt, challenges to face inside and outside the yoga room, and I am not wishing any of them away. Still the sense of accomplishment and exhilaration is huge as we count down, and that is indeed a part of the present moment.

Greetings to all,

Mary

Saturday, May 17 – 6:17 p.m.

Two-thirds of the way!

We have just finished our sixth week of training. This is the weekend for teacher re-certification, so there are more teachers here than ever. They have been marveling at the great venue we have here in Acapulco and the size of the yoga room. They have joined us in some of our classes, and we have seen many of them going through the same physical reactions to the heat and humidity that we endured in our first week or so here. By now, the number of people in our class leaving the room in any given class is sharply reduced from those first weeks, but we still have some very difficult classes that cause a number of people trouble. The main environmental issues are heat, humidity and lack of air circulation. May is a very hot and humid month here in Acapulco. Couple that with the added humidity of 300 or so sweaty bodies and no air movement to induce evaporation, and you have the makings for a very vicious stew. Dehydration, diarrhea, and electrolyte imbalance continue to be problems for many people; unfortunately, any of those things can sneak up and bite you when you are least expecting it. As each new group of visiting teachers arrives, we hear all over again how great we have it here. I second Frank's commentary in his blog on that subject. No matter what the setting, this training takes every bit of strength, every fiber of will, every resource you have, and some you didn't know you have. We have our share of challenges unique to being in Acapulco. One of the things we have heard about is the reservations some had about putting the training in Mexico because of the unique physical challenges of this climate and individual reactions to the food and water. And we have heard that our training has had more dehydration, diarrhea and electrolyte imbalance than any other training so far. But here we are, at the end of the sixth week, and Carla, Frank and I, as well as most of the rest are still going strong, and getting stronger!

Bikram is gone again, to India for the funeral of his best friend. He and Raj left Thursday morning. He will be back on May 20, and will stay with us until graduation, except for a couple of days when he will be in Mexico City. With Bikram gone and not lecturing, we have been in posture clinic non-stop. This week started with the last of Tree Pose and Toe Stand, and last night, I delivered Floor Bow, which gives you an idea of how fast things are moving. We could well finish the remaining postures this coming week, but with Bikram back on Tuesday, we anticipate no evening posture clinics from Tuesday through Friday, so that could slow us down. The problem is that when Bikram is lecturing, we have very late nights which seriously cuts into study time. At least with posture clinic, we know we will be done at 11:30 p.m.

I experienced a breakthrough in posture clinic this week. My perfectionist tendencies have gotten in my way (and I am not alone in this trait, I have discovered). There is a trick to the whole dialogue mastery: on the one hand, we are supposed to memorize and deliver it verbatim, but on the other hand, if you focus all your energy on the verbatim component, you are unable to do anything except recite it verbatim, which means that if you lose the thread of memory, the whole thing collapses like a deck of cards. It is a fine line to walk. The farther into posture clinic we get, the clearer the message has become. The verbatim mastery is a key that allows you to depart from the dialogue enough to forget a word or line and move on fluently, to be distracted or to make corrections and still return to the dialogue. So at the end of this week, after working hard on getting past mere recitation and into actual teaching with energy and interest, I had two great back to back deliveries of Locust and Full Locust, where I felt I got through that barrier. Then I did Bow Pose, my third posture delivery on a single day, and promptly took two steps backwards. But the truly important thing for me was not so much getting through the barrier as not getting all wound up about being less than perfect in Bow Pose. I felt a sense of freedom about being able to say, so what? I am done with that pose for now, I know that I know it, and I can move on without beating myself up.

As we begin our seventh week, the "winding down" activities have started in earnest. The yearbook group is hard at work, photos are being taken left and right, orders are being taken for the Spring 2008 training t-shirts, and people are recognizing how little time is left. When you first arrive and the nine weeks lay in front of you, it is easy to think you have all the time in the world. Now, we recognize that we will never be with this same group of 270 people again in this way. We may stay in touch with many, visit or run into some, but never again as a unit. In many ways it is the same feeling I had when I finished college.

I still have not seen anything of Acapulco except our hotel ("the bubble") and the nearby shopping area. I feel that is as it should be. My focus is on maximizing my experience in this training, not in seeing the sights in Acapulco. Maybe in the waning weeks of training I will feel I have the luxury of some distractions, but for now, I am content to immerse myself totally in the training schedule. I long for such luxuries as red meat, greens like kale or spinach or really any vegetables prepared in interesting ways (we have a lot of steamed broccoli and cauliflower, which they added to the buffet after the first week because we were clamoring for vegetables, but now, after six weeks of daily broccoli and cauliflower, I want some variety!), real oatmeal and barley, peaches, sauces of any kind that are not tomato based . . . I could go on and on. But I can wait for three more weeks for that. In the meantime, a girl can dream . . . .

Greetings to all at BYB,

Mary

Saturday, May 10 – 1:43 p.m.

Sleep Deprivation and Other Challenges

At the end of week five of teacher training, we are more than halfway through but still have a chunk of experiences and challenges ahead of us. Bikram returned to Acapulco on Monday evening, as scheduled, but in sorrow due to the death of his lifelong best friend and partner, the son [Biswanath] of his guru [Bishnu Ghosh]. We understand he will be leaving again sometime this coming week for a trip to India because of that, but in the meantime, he has spent a lot of time with us. He told us he returned here to draw on our energy and love in his time of grief. In fact, on Tuesday, he took a class with us, taught by Mike from Bend, OR, so he could be down on the yoga floor in the midst of his students.

Teachers have been arriving each day by the tens or dozens. Not all of them get the opportunity to teach the teacher trainees; in fact, we are led to believe that getting a teaching spot is quite a plum, and may be the result of certain attentions or gifts paid to Bikram, and may also be the result of Bikram's whim. For example, he gave up his own teaching slot on Thursday afternoon to Karen from Texas because it was her birthday. That class was probably the single best class I have had since I arrived. I felt strong, and powerful, and energized. I felt the return of joy to my yoga practice, something I had been missing. When one is challenged by the tensions of teacher training, the grueling schedule of two yoga classes every day, missing loved ones and friends, the disruption of familiar and comforting routines, the rigorous studying and performance demands of posture clinic, and various physical ailments that come out of no where, losing the pure joy in yoga that brought us here in the first place seems like a cruel joke. It is hard to describe the fear and anxiety that many of us have felt about entering the yoga room twice a day. Aside from the purely physical things (the heat, the extremely high humidity, the lack of air circulation in parts of the room, the slippery carpet, not knowing who will be teaching and therefore not knowing how demanding the class will be), we have faced doubts about our physical endurance on any given day, betrayals in our bodies, and the feeling that in each class, we are literally starting over in our yoga practice, rebuilding it from the bottom up. Postures which never were a problem before, postures at which we excelled, have become huge stumbling blocks; sometimes the emotional barriers are worse than the physical ones.

We have been told that things will now get both easier and harder. One of the harder parts for me and many others is sleep deprivation, which we have encountered during the last couple of weeks with posture clinics running until 11:30, and the need to study after that. Those who had learned dialog ahead of time had less trouble with that form of sleep deprivation than those who had not. I also found that getting to bed as soon as possible, but getting up earlier to study, was better for my sleep needs. This week, however, with Bikram's return, we faced another form of sleep deprivation which is far more challenging. You know, of course, about his lectures that can go until the wee hours. To his lectures, he has added the element of DVDs, an 80 plus hour film depiction of the Mahabharata. Three nights this week, he has forced us to watch segments of this film. The first night, we were kept up until after 1:00 a.m. The next night, it was 2:20 a.m. Last night, it was 4:18 a.m., and we had an 8:00 a.m. yoga class this morning. The quality is amateurish at best, the sound quality is horrible, the volume is almost intolerable, the dialog is subtitled, and the story line is almost incomprehensible. As the night wears on, people start crashing to the floor. Many have started to bring pillows and blankets (because the hall is air conditioned). Last night, the DVD didn't even start until after midnight, and the segment was four hours long. By the time we were let out early this morning, the floor of the hall was littered with bodies, and only a few stalwarts actually stayed awake for the whole thing, mostly because they couldn't sleep with the noise and the discomfort of the chairs and floor. Some visiting teachers have expressed disbelief and dismay about the forced nature of this sleep deprivation. I think Bikram feels he has free rein because we only have to walk a little way to our rooms at the end of such an evening.

We are fearful about the effect of this additional sleep deprivation on our ability to keep up with studying the dialog. We also know that we face additional challenges in posture clinic, as our evaluators add distractions, disruptions and demands for corrections to our recitation of the dialog. Oh me, oh my!

The surrounding beauty and luxury of this resort is almost surreal as a backdrop to the grueling schedule and demands of teacher training. In some ways, I have become oblivious to the spectacle of the ocean and the four star elements of the hotel, which dim in comparison to the challenges of making it through another class, another day, another week.

Tonight, several of us are treating ourselves to a Mother's Day dinner at one of the buffet restaurants. I am looking forward to that, and to our day off tomorrow.

Keep sending that energy. We need it more than ever!

* * * * *

I realized after I sent my latest update that I left out some other significant events. One of the best was a Bikram press conference for the Mexican press held in the magnificent open air lobby of our hotel. As part of the press conference, about 20 of Bikram's best teachers put on a demonstration (abbreviated) of the 26 postures and two breathing exercises, and then a demonstration of some truly breathtaking advanced postures. Included in the demonstrators were the current world first and second place female yoga champions and the 2005 male world yoga champion. It was an inspiring reminder of what this yoga is all about and why we came here in the first place. Frank will probably talk about this in his blog . . . as well as about the fact that he has become somewhat of a celebrity due to his blog. A teacher from Florida came up to him on Friday and asked if he was "Frankie D" and told him that she was one of many teachers following his blog.

I probably put too much emphasis on some of our challenges (the sleep deprivation is so recent and raw!) and not enough on the positive aspects of this experience. We all have made so many new and wonderful friends. Each part of each day we share is a gift. Recovering my joy in yoga this week is a gift. Celebrating the ups and downs of each others' work in posture clinics and working with one another to improve our performances is a gift. Sometimes the wrapping is a little misleading, but the inside of the package is beautiful.

Friday, May 2 – 10:02 p.m.

So, two weeks have passed since I wrote about some of the questions people had about our day to day living and experiences here in Acapulco. Teacher training is such an intense experience that it is hard to communicate how much happens each day, even though each day seems like the day before and the day before and the day before.

Everything revolves around the two yoga classes each day, one at 8:30 am and the other at 5:00 pm. We heard today, for the first time, some reliable data about the conditions in the yoga room. Jim Kallett arrived yesterday and lectured today (for over three hours - my, he loves to talk), and he told us the room is 106 degrees and 75% humidity. They have apparently decided to keep the temperature down because of the very high humidity here. We are at the point in training where a lot of visiting teachers are here to participate in posture clinics and to teach and take classes. The teacher trainees are amused and take a sort of grim satisfaction in the fact that the visiting teachers in the back of the room are having a lot of trouble keeping up with the classes. One of them, a retired firefighter from New York named Charlie, was so dehydrated after one class that he could not attend the second class of the day. Others are sitting out postures. However, none of them are leaving the room because of the bad example that would set for the trainees. By this time in training, leaving the room is simply not allowed unless one is vomiting, or unless one is carried out. And yes, both of those things are still happening.

Posture clinics have been going this week in earnest. We burned through the last of Awkward, Eagle, Standing Head to Knee, Standing Bow, Balancing Stick, Standing Separate Leg Stretching and Triangle this week. Not all of the trainees are done with Triangle, but Carla, Frank and I have all delivered that posture. We all had our ups and downs this week. The pace was frantic, people were short of sleep, the yoga classes are physically demanding, we had our second anatomy test on Monday, and we know that it will only get harder, not easier in the next several weeks. I was really dragging this morning before yoga class, but both classes today went quite well for me. That, coupled with the fact we have the night off tonight (Friday), made for a nice ending to week four.

Our posture clinics are structured so that each day, the groups are shuffled up and combined with different groups, two to a room, for posture clinic. That way, you get to see a lot of different people over the course of a week, even though you see the same 15 or 16 people in your group each posture clinic. The range of skill level is astounding to me. Many, many people made the decision to come here at the last minute and did not receive their dialog until days before they arrived. One guy was handed his dialog here once he arrived. Others have been working for months on their dialog, have all the postures memorized, and should be familiar to Julie as fellow "dialog dogs." I am so grateful I spent the time I did preparing dialog before I left. I had the standing series memorized, and I learned Cobra on the airplane trip down here. That preparation has allowed me to do well in posture clinics (though I would not describe myself as a "dialog dog") with a minimum of lost sleep. We are rapidly coming up on the postures I don't have memorized, but the floor postures tend to be shorter and repeat many word patterns now familiar from the standing series. Frank continues to impress the visiting teachers in his groups with his delivery, though he has had to scramble hard this week to master the dialog for the postures we have done, and this has cost him some sleep. Carla is doing well also.

The hotel is full this weekend because it is a long holiday weekend for Mexicans, Cinqo de Mayo, and Acapulco is a favorite vacation destination spot for Mexican families. Our weekends are very precious to us. We get shopping and other errands done, catch up on sleep, and study, study, study. As training continues, we spend less and less time taking advantage of this truly exquisite location, and more and more time finding out of the way places to learn and practice dialog. This weekend, we will be all dialog all the time. Generally on weekends, though, we find time to visit the salt water pool which is great for tired and sore bodies.

Bikram returns on Monday, May 5, and we expect our nights will get longer and our evening yoga classes harder with his return. It is hard to believe that we are almost half way through the training at this point. At times it seems to have gone by in a flash, but the thought of five more weeks is daunting. We are all stronger, leaner, way more tired, and have way more endurance than when we left.

We hope the Yogathon is going well. To all those doing the 30 in 30, or whatever personal challenge you have set for yourselves, we say, "You rock!" We are learning every day how powerful this yoga practice is, and the wonderful changes it can bring about, not just when practiced as intensively as we are doing, but in a day to day, individually paced practice. Please keep thinking of us and sending us your amazing energy. I personally tap into that energy flow every single yoga class in my private mediation before class starts. I wish I could record for all the BYB yogis the sound of pranayama breathing from 300 pairs of lungs. That sound alone could change the world.

I am sure you have read in Frank's blog about our earthquakes. We have had at least four since we arrived, none of them causing any damage or injury around the hotel. But there are several nervous Nellies who want to know what emergency plans there are to get us out of the yoga room (which has only two doors out of the room itself, and only one door out of the building) in the event of a serious earthquake or tsunami. I don't even know if they have tsunamis here, but there are people worried about the possibility.

I have much more I could write, but I am going to take advantage of our night off and get some much needed sleep. After all, I have one more yoga class tomorrow morning at 8:00 with Craig and his infamous Awkward pose.

Hugs to all the BYB yogis. We love and miss you all.

Friday, April 18 – 10:30 p.m.

We are happy that so many Bloomington yogis are interested in our ups and downs and ins and outs. As [Laiki] and Herb and Julie know, it is an all-encompassing, mind-blowing, heart-enlarging, spirit breaking and spirit making experience.

For me, this week has been (so far, since we have one more class tomorrow morning, probably with Craig) a good one for classes. I have had 8 good ones and only 2 really tough ones, and as I told Neil in an email recently, I will take those percentages for the rest of TT! I am a little concerned because this morning I pulled a groin muscle on the left during second set of triangle in Emmy's last class. I spoke with one of the assistants about it, but we don't get a lot of coddling or sympathy for such things from them. All she said was listen in class, you'll get lots of good information and back off if you really feel you need to, which makes it sound like one really shouldn't. Taking my cue from [Laiki] and Herb, I did become my own teacher and I did back off, especially in Triangle, but I am hurting tonight. I hope the rest I will get this weekend will help heal it before it becomes a more major problem.

We started Backward Bending and Pada Hastasana in Posture Clinic this afternoon, and who was the first one? That dialogue dog, Patrice! She did well.

Please tell Julie that we are using her learning technique, and others who have heard about it come to us to get the details. We are paying it forward for her and we are grateful for her help.

We have the sound of a live band outside our room tonight. If last night is any indication, they will be performing until at least 1:00 a.m. Not at all conducive to sleep or to a 8:00 a.m. class tomorrow. Somehow, we take it all in stride.

This weekend we will be studying for the first anatomy test on Monday and working on, what else, dialogue.

Love to all of the BYB folks and especially you three mentors.

Mary

Friday, April 18 – 7:50 a.m.

Bikram leaves today and won't be back until May 5. Once he is back, he is back until graduation. He has spent more time with this training group than any in recent years. Word is that he really likes the venue, but he is also in planning to design and create a healing center here, along with refining the teacher training facilities.

We have all noticed that after only two weeks, our bodies are noticeably different in appearance. Frank is looking trimmer, as is Carla, and they both tell me I do, too. The shorts that I bought a size smaller than usual are no longer tight on me, if that is any indication. Some of the other clothes I brought are too big.

Greet everyone at BYB for us. How is the Yogathon going? Is there the usual high energy, high interest, and high attendance?

It is hard to believe we are at the end of week 2 already. We are scheduled so tightly that the days just fly by.

The weather is not at all a problem. Even though the temperature and humidity may be high, their effects are moderated by the constant ocean breeze, which the buildings are designed to take advantage of. The rooms are air conditioned so sleeping is no problem, and the lecture hall and posture clinic rooms are air conditioned as well. None of the AC is all that cold, but the dehumidifying effect is welcome.

The yoga room is another matter. None of us know the actual temperature, and I guess I don't want to know, and the humidity is very high. We start sweating as soon as we walk in the room, and we are dripping profusely as soon as we start pranayama breathing. Hence the attention we have to pay to electrolytes and hydration. I seem to have hit on a good balance. I put lime juice, a pinch of sea salt, and a pinch of sugar (Rajashree's recipe) into my water jug (an orange half gallon insulated thermos from WalMart), fill it half full of ice, then add water, and a 1/2 teaspoon of the liquid electrolytes. In addition, I take a tablet electrolyte provided by the program before each class. So I am taking a half gallon of water during each class, and I am drinking a lot between classes and after class. About 1/3 to a 1/2 of us have the orange thermos jugs, and the teachers are amused by that.

Thursday, April 17

We got out of the evening session at 10:10, which is early for us. However, there is a big convention going on and now they tell us the music outdoors will go on until 1:00 a.m. each night through Saturday. As I write this, I can hear it very clearly and loudly as it is right outside our balcony.

It really is a paradise here. I would love it if you could see it.

All of us are feeling well right now, getting stronger, and we know there is much more to come.

Tell Julie…Frank and I have met her friend from teacher training, the one from Las Vegas. Her name escapes me at the moment, but she will know who it is. [Toni Jo]

* * * * *

After eight classes of yoga so far this week, I have had 6 very good ones (including two today), and two very hard ones. I will take those percentages anytime. Today we had an afternoon program from Dr. Lillian Glass, a performance and voice expert, who was entertaining, fun, energizing, and worked miracles on individuals we have seen perform in posture clinic. It was a nice change of pace from our previous afternoon schedule, and we were all up from that experience. Bikram did not teach tonight, so we had one of his assistants, Julia, who taught an amazing and wonderful class.

* * * * *

I am much better now, after a very good morning class with Emmy. Too bad she leaves today. Every one of my classes with her has been great. Bikram is also leaving for a while, which means we will have a variety of guest teachers and Bikram's assistants. My understanding is that a lot of those classes are really tough, as people try to prove how hard they can be.

But I take one class at a time and vent when necessary, which seems to be often.

Sunday, April 13 – 6:29 p.m.

It is so nice to know that our fellow Bloomington yogis are so interested in our journeys, and that we have the benefit of so many good wishes and positive energy.

I want to answer your [Laiki’s] questions, and some of this might overlap things in Carla's and Frank's blogs, but a little repetition never hurts (as in studying dialogue). So here goes:

1. We were told originally there were about 290 people here, but that was not a final number. So far, they have not given us the final number. We have noticed there are a few faces missing from the first few days. One guy I really like, Mick from Chicago, a college professor on sabbatical, seems to have disappeared. There may be others as well, but we haven't been kept informed. I think they don't really want us to know that people have left, for fear of contagion.

2. Carla and I are roommates and we are doing quite well together. I will let Frank tell you about his roommate, Todd, who is from Winnipeg. Carla and Todd are in the same dialogue group. Frank and I are in different groups. We have daily maid service, with changes of bedding and towels every two days. The hotel will not allow us to go longer on sheets or towels, despite our requests to be a little more "green." Something to do with their corporate standards. The hotel has provided a laundry service for $3 per kilo. We make every effort to give them only dry clothes, so they weigh less. This is a great deal. We drop off the bags in the morning before our 8:30 class and they are returned to us clean and folded the following day after the morning class. Cheaper, easier, and less time consuming than any other alternative.

3. Food . . . we have the one midday buffet meal provided as part of our package. This is every day, weekends included. The buffet is half breakfast things and half lunch things, and the hotel has been excellent at responding to specific food requests, like more steamed vegetables, more avocados, more guacamole, more hand fruits (apples, pears, bananas). There is a wide variety of choices, so that even a person like me who eats no starch is able to find plenty to eat there. It is our main meal. We are on our own for breakfast and dinner.

The hotel has strict rules against food or cooking in the rooms, so appliances like blenders, microwaves, hotplates, etc. are not allowed. Some of us have coffee makers which provide a source of hot water, but others don't. We all have two small refrigerators in our rooms. The hotel relaxed the "no food in the rooms rule" enough so that we can have produce and dairy products, but we are not supposed to have meat or bread. In practice, however, we were told that as long as we brought things back from the store in our Bikram backpacks or some other luggage disguise (so that it is not evident to the other hotel guests what we are doing), and as long as we don't plug up the sinks or toilets, we are okay. If someone really screws up, though, all bets may be off.

One last really good thing . . . Mundomex, which is a Mexican corporation, is working on this TT with Bikram, kind of as a sponsor. Their logo appears on our backpacks along with Bikram's logo. Mundomex is providing a van that runs between WalMart (about a 20 minute walk away, not bad, unless you are carrying twenty pounds of produce) and the hotel on weekends, roughly every 20 minutes. Sam's Club and CostCo are close by, as is MegaMart, a grocery store. The hours of the hotel restaurants are weird. For example, the Beach Club, which has bar food like hamburgers, closes at 6:00 p.m., which means during the week, we can't go there. But there is a little carry-out cafe, open till midnight, that has fruit plates, salads, made to order sandwiches and paninis, coffee, ice cream and pastries, and a lot of us go there for evening take-out.

4. The weekend. This is a four-star hotel with two golf courses, tennis courts, five pools, including a salt water pool (which all three of us LOVE), and a full service spa. We have special pricing at the spa, so today (Sunday), Carla and I had pedicures. A lot of people used the van service to go shopping to various places close by, both yesterday and today. A lot of people were out at the various pools studying dialogue mostly in groups. Some people chose to eat outside the hotel just to get a break from the routine of the week. (I know it sounds like we are spoiled, but even the lunch buffet gets boring day after day.)

5. We have all made new friends. We also stick together a lot, but this weekend we have been doing our own things as well. I think when we get in our groups, stronger bonds will be made as well. Patrice is doing fine. We interact with her a fair amount. She had a rather disastrous roommate situation. She arrived on Saturday, but chose to stay in a cheaper hotel nearby. When she got here on Sunday, her assigned roommate had found someone she wanted to room with, and allowed that woman to move into the room. They kind of put the whole burden on Patrice to figure out. It was a mess. Eventually, she ended up moving into the room vacated by the interloper, and it seems to be working out okay now. Another bad thing happened to Patrice. Just a day or so after sign-in was started, she forgot to sign into yoga class. So she did the class, then was told she had to do a make-up this weekend. She was devastated.

6. Until Saturday, Bikram and Raj taught all the classes, Raj in the morning, him in the afternoon. Saturday, Craig [the director of Teacher Training] taught. Enough said there. Tomorrow, Emmy [Bikram's most senior teacher] arrives and we will have morning classes with her all week, and afternoon classes with Bikram. That is all we know for sure right now.

Get this . . . the auditorium where all the lectures are held is carpeted in GREEN carpeting and the chairs are upholstered in GREEN. One would have thought this unacceptable to Bikram . . . he even made a woman take off a green bracelet during dialogue clinic! Perhaps that is where the hotel drew the line in accommodating his demands. Hard to say.

Hope that answers a lot of the questions people have. We need to get dinner now, and then work on dialogue again tonight.

With best wishes and gratitude for your love and energy,

Mary

Thursday, April 10 – 7:20 a.m.

Hi, Herb and Laiki!

I wanted to send a quick email. Both Carla and I did our first dialogue presentation last night...the one in front of the whole group and Bikram. This was the fourth session of recitation, and it took that long for us to position ourselves to actually get it done. There are a lot of very eager beavers in this class; maybe it is always that way. Patrice was the second person in the entire class to do her dialogue for Bikram and she did extremely well, especially in comparison to the first guy, who had it perfectly memorized but clearly was out to impress Bikram and did not "teach" the dialogue.

What Bikram said about me was, "Very, very sweet dialogue. Her students will love her." We also had a brief colloquy about me being a lawyer, arising out of my introduction. He asked a woman a few people before me whether this was the hardest thing she had ever done. When I introduced myself, I said before this the hardest thing I had ever done was go to law school and take the bar exam. I added I thought this nine weeks might just prove to be harder. I found out how little Bikram likes lawyers! But I told him I became a lawyer before there were too many! He thought that was funny. After my recitation, he told the class to give me another round of applause for passing the bar exam!

All in all, quite an exhilarating experience. Now we are getting ready for our third day of double classes. People are falling all around us. We all thank you for the preparation work you two and Julie did with us, not just the TAP sessions, but also all the wise and helpful hints that have allowed us to avoid some of the pitfalls of the first week. It is still as hard as HELL.

Love to you and all the Bloomington yogis! Carla says to say hello from her.

Mary

Saturday, April 5 – 10:57 p.m.

Herb and Laiki,

This is Mary on Frank's computer! I wanted to tell you about my fabulous flight - 19 people on a full sized plane! Made for a very comfortable flight. There were five other women on the flight coming to TT, from Seattle, Vancouver, Washington, D.C., Michigan, and New York.

It is hot, hot, hot, here. Lovely hotel.

Here we go!

Love,

Mary