Even My Yoga's Spicy, Ya'll!

This may go without saying, but I'm generally a slothful food-a-holic with a very short attention span and occasional bouts of Type-A personality. (I wish I could say that I'm being hyperbolic in saying all that--I'm not. Tis' true). This makes exercising very difficult--if I'm at a typical yoga class or on a run I'm thinking about the following, all at the same time:

a.) a cheeseburger

b.) how boring exercise is

c.) chocolate

d.) how my legs/ankles/lungs/stomach/earlobes hurt too much to go any further

e.) how lame I am at fitness.

Thankfully, all that may have changed, now that I've found Bikram yoga. Bikram yoga consists of way too many people in tiny spandex clothing, doing deep balancing and stretching postures in a 104-115 degree room while being coached by a tiny, cut person with a headset. It's intense, and I've found that the only way I can make it through the 90 minute session is to concentrate all my willpower on doing the postures in a way that benefits my body. If I think for one second about the heat of the room, or how shallow my breathing is, I'm toast. (Mmmmm, toast with apple buttermmmmmmm!)

I've only gone 3 times, and my body is already changing. My torso is longer, and all the tension that I carry around in my chest and shoulders is gone. About 70 minutes into my second class, I was laying in corpse pose after a particularly sternum-crushing posture and it felt like a huge weight I didn't even know I'd been carrying around had been lifted off my chest. And laying there, chest heaving, red-faced, and covered in sweat after an hour + of cardio-heavy yoga, I felt like the happiest person on the planet. And I wasn't even thinking about chocolate.