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Experimented with a hot bath before practice, followed by a few minutes on the rack.

Miscalculated slightly, and ended up in a SCALDING bath. I’m a fan of much-too-hot water, but this was even hotter than that. Pain receptors are less sensitive in the morning, perhaps? It wasn’t until I was lying in the water that I realized I was burning. “Oh well, I’m already in,” I thought.

Read for 15 minutes about research done on yogis in the (um, I think) 50s, re: how they could control their sympathetic nervous systems. Hearts running at super low speeds, imperceptible pulses. The conclusion was that they were using the valsalva maneuver to slow things down, and muscular contractions to possibly move their hearts outside of the range of the EKG probes.

Yeah, whatever, you crazy rational scientists. It’s savasana! And it’s MAGIC.

Alrighty, so 15 minutes in the HOT bath. Perfect, right? Uh, well… if feeling super faint upon exiting the bath is perfect. Then a few minutes on the rack and out the door.

Practice was bendy, which was the purpose of all of this, but there was a bit of a catch. I had a REALLY hard time regulating my breath. I did intermediate instead of primary today, and my breath wanted to default to shallow — which isn’t really anything new, but it was less fixable than usual. I attribute that to the stimulation of the overly hot water.

I managed pretty well to make the in- and exhales even, until kapotasana. Everything went to hell there, because MM is having me do long holds of kapo B over and over before we do kapo A. Then another B at the end.

I don’t think it’s my imagination here: MM is happier when I do second than when I do primary. I have no idea why this is.