First timer sickness

 Indeed, no 2 yoga classes are ever the same. No, not even when you do a double take.

It is common for first timers to feel dizzy, nauseated, with a pulled muscle.

I experienced no such thing.

But last night, for the first time since I started taking yoga, I felt all that. Everything that I thought i was sort of immune from, well it happened to me all at once.

First I pulled my left hamstrings. How? I just bent down to fix my mat and I didn't bend my knees. this was before the class started. Really hurt like a sonuvabitch but I thought, heck, I'm sure it's all gonna be gone during the class. I don't nurse pains like this. Bullshit. You don't lick your wounds. And that I did. Until I was doing the "Japanese Ham sandwich" (forward bend) pose and I almost gave myself a knee to the face because my left leg was too painful to be straightened. I tried to, but it snapped, as if my leg was telling me "dude, I'm injured! What's the matter with you!?" ... Ryan saw that and asked me if I was fine and I told him I might have pulled a muscle. He did tell me to take things easy, not to overstretch and such. And did I listen? Uh, no. I didn't feel good about it having to do a sit up and being able to straighten my right leg and not my left. Bad move really. Good thing there though is just this: damn, I was still able to stretch my left leg up almost 90 degrees on the standing bow pose. Good in the short term for my ego, bad for my leg. Ended up limping at the end of the class. Thing is this happens to me quite a lot of times and normally, when I just go about the class without nursing my painful leg, it goes away after class. Ryan told me that it's possible I had an injury in the past that  made my muscles weaker (for lack of better term) and now it's easily pulled. That if it always happens, you need to really see a doctor or else you might end up tearing it. Great. I'll die if I find I can't do yoga anymore.  :|

Second, I got dizzy in class. And it's the kind of dizzy that makes the world around you spin like crazy. I didn't want to sit lest I make it worse. So I excused myself from class. And Ryan knows that when I go for bathroom breaks, it takes me less than a minute to go back. In this case, I missed 2 poses already. I felt so nauseated and eventually I got sick to the stomach. Thank God i left the room right away. I mean , it's normal, there are people who really end up throwing up in class. I haven't seen it myself, but well, let's just say you'll know when you enter the studio that someone from the earlier class got sick. Oh God... for the first time... and I thought it wouldn't happen to me.

So some notes from this experience:

1. Seriously, when you eat (even more than 3 hours before class), eat something that is easily digested.
2. When you pull a muscle, DO NOT overstretch. Put ice on it when you get home. During the class, sure, do the posture properly, but forgo pushing yourself to the limit because for all you know, you're already aggravating your situation.
3. If while in class and you end up throwing up, take gatorade after. That's exactly what I did and I found that I didn't lose energy when I got back into class. Yeah, you may not be feeling sick anymore, but you end up feeling weak. So just take a few sips of gatorade, just don't drink it like a fish. finish like a fourth of the bottle at the most. That should get you up and running for class again.

Ugh. No 2 yoga classes are ever the same.

Which means that if you ever encounter these things in one class, just learn from it, let it go, and have that courage to go back to class. the trick is not to "die another day" but to be "better the next day." Of course it happens all the time, obviously there's something wrong with you. Either you didn't learn or you didn't even acknowledge that you did something wrong. ;D

And as any yogi knows, the key is determination. No one wants to go back to a heated room after feeling sick to your stomach. frankly there feels to be no reason to. But you have to. Or else you'll feel scared of it for the rest of your life.


Namaste.