Things are settling down for me a bit. I feel much more optimistic about my yoga practice tonight. I don't know why, but the teacher with whom I've had issues is not teaching at our studios, at least not in the next month or so. It's a bit of a relief to me. I was just having a very hard time feeling okay when I took classes from her. I have been trying to remind myself that it is always MY practice, no matter what, and I'm going to continue trying to convince myself of it!

One of my teachers told me that the 2 year mark is a bit of a watershed for many Bikram yogis. She said that at this point, you either choose to move deeper into the practice or you move away from it. She said she's often seen people go on to take up some other sport or activity after about 2 years of dedicated practice. She said studio owners seem to have a 5 year shelf life, too.

I was trying to explain to her what I'm struggling with, internally, about my practice. For the first year or so, it felt like everyone was like, "yea! Good for you! You're doing yoga, and you're coming to class a lot! Awesome!" Then, sometime in my second year of regular practice, it started to feel like some of the teachers and regular students were more like, "Can't you do any better than that? Why aren't you trying harder? You need to work harder! You're not doing it right!"

And, yeah, after a while, it's reasonable for teachers to push harder, expect more, etc. It's just...hard sometimes.

One thing that's helped me a lot lately is being reminded of the physical benefits of the practice. I SO took it to heart the first time I heard, "As long as you're doing your best, you're getting the full physiological benefit of the posture." One of my facebook friends has a sister who owns a Bikram Yoga studio. She had posted an article about the health benefits of yoga, and while I know most all of that stuff by now, it really helped me to read it all again. I'm not doing yoga with pretty pretty postures as my goal; I'm doing yoga because it's really freaking good for my health--physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.