Day 12: Is this me?

None of my yogini buddies were in class today.  It was just me, my mat and a nice flowing 530 class with Anastashia.  She has a pretty nice dialog rhythm and a cool accent that I can't quite place, and got us out of there in about 86 minutes.  I had a bunch of stuff to do after yoga, including rushing off to pick up my daughter for the weekend and appreciated the few extra minutes to lay in peace and not feel like I had to pick up my mat and bolt out the door as soon as she said "namaste".  As I stood on my mat waiting for pranayama breathing to start, I started in the mirror and got the same sensation I had a couple of days ago "is that my body?  why does it look so different?".  I SWEAR this has never happened to me with such frequency before, and trust me, my body has gone through a ton of changes in the last year and a half.  I started this yoga journey a size 16 and tipping the scales at a whopping 197.  I wish I could say that was my heaviest...5 years ago I was 216 and a "Layne Bryant" (re: cannot shop in a normal store) 18.   So now at a size 12 and down to 173, on my way to my goal of 155, I can't help but wonder why now all of the sudden do I seem so different in the mirror?  It was almost like doing yoga in somebody else's body, especially in wind removing pose, I was more compact than ever before in the last part where you have both legs up.  Well, I love to analyze, but the purpose of my blog is to observe, note and record so I can look back and see what I experienced.  So I'll just leave that alone for now and see if it resurfaces throughout this challenge.

Once I got past the odd feelings, I felt pretty strong and had a decent practice.  I did have some balancing issues.  Standing head to knee, forget it.  As soon as I kicked out I realized the weight was not properly distributed in my standing foot and keeled over kind of sideways somehow.  On top of that, keeping my standing knee locked for a minute hasn't been a problem lately, but today it burned and I couldn't quite make it.  I nailed a couple of fairly decent standing bows, getting my body down more today, but couldn't hang on past 20 seconds.  Other than those minor challenges, I felt pretty good.  I was at the front counter getting a zico after class and Anastashia asked how I felt.  I told her great and thanked her for a nice class.  She smiled and said "you have a strong practice, it's nice".  Of course that was wonderful to hear and I was grinning ear to ear as I walked away from the counter.