Goddammit

Did you miss me?  Who am I kidding; of COURSE you missed me.  I missed you all like crazy too.  But it’s been really tough writing about the joys of Bikram lately because, well, there just hasn’t been much joy during Bikram.  And now there’s not much Bikram.

I’ve written before about my issues with tachycardia in class.  Eventually I reached the point where it was happening more often than not. I begrudgingly accepted that it probably wasn’t normal to have my heart jump from 60 to 200bpm during the very first posture, so off I toddled to the doctor… who promptly advised me to quit Bikram.  Which…  yeah.  Like that was going to happen.  Second opinion, here I come!

Second opinion was the same.

Third opinion; third time lucky… kind of.  This doctor just banned me from Bikram until I could get my heart checked out.  Which has been difficult for a number of reasons; not least of which is the fact that I started a new job fairly recently (and promptly flew off to America for a four week holiday).  Unfortunately, this means my ability to take a couple of half-days off work to visit a cardiologist is fairly limited right now.  There’s also the fun fact that the portable monitor they’d use to track my heart for 24 hours?  You can’t get it wet.  And the only place my heartrate reliably goes nuts is at Bikram.  Let’s think about the logistics of that for a moment.

So I begged and I pleaded and I gazed upon the doctor with puppy dog eyes, until he sighed and said that if I wanted to take risks with my heart there was nothing he could do to stop me, but PLEASE, for the love of god, take it easy in class and call an ambulance the second it happens again.

If there are two thoughts you don’t want to have going into Bikram, they’re “take it easy” and “call an ambulance if your heartrate rises.”  Way to harsh my buzz, dude.

So with this enthusiastic consent from my doctor, I struggled through a handful of unsatisfying classes; flopping to my mat gracelessly and making frustrated faces at the mirror every time my pulse started to rise.  And with all that extra time to think, I started focussing on how much more my hips have been hurting over the past few months.  They’ve always been dodgy – pretty much any movement will make them click and clunk in their joints – but lately it’s gone from “huh, that’s a funny noise” to “owowowowowow.”  I decided that since I had all this free time due to the severe lack of Bikram in my life, I might as well get it checked out.  And off I toddled to the physio.

Who promptly advised me to quit Bikram.

Not just Bikram, in fact, but yoga in general.  Apparently I have fairly severe hip dysplasia, and apparently yoga is the WORST THING EVER for hip dysplasia.  So, you know, it appears I have a talent for falling in love with life-changing activities that will completely ruin my body.  That’s something, right?

Right???

So I came home from the physio and cried into a plate of cupcakes.  Then I started working on my page full of exercises to try and get the right muscles working.  My physio is dangling in front of me the vague promise that maybe, one day, if I work really really hard, I might be able to go back to class.  As long as I don’t go too often.  And balance it out with pilates or something.  And (once again) if I take it easy.

I give it a fortnight before I decide that Bikram is more important than hips.