Number 1: Passion for experiencing your body's full capacity can completely transcend ego. Case-in-point: I am standing barefoot in the middle of a mall in a mom leotard with ashy knees at an unflattering angle. If anyone would have sent me this future flash in high school, I would have been mortified. I remember about a year ago when I started doing Bikram yoga so often, I started forming what they call stigmatas all over my body. Tiny scabs on my pelvic bones, little dark patches on my formerly smooth knees, a crusty patch of skin under my chin. All from the slow, steady process of opening up my body centimeter by centimeter, day by day. I now wear these unsightly little badges proudly, knowing that I've earned them, and that my body is so much more balanced, stronger, and healthier because of them. It's well worth the cool points I've had to give up.

Number 2: Although making eye contact with your own rear end appears to be a useless tool, it actually has many benefits. This pose is usually done in a pretty intense part of class. We are allowed to practice third sets in our Bikram yoga studio, so this means while the dialogue and routine calls for the class to be in savasana, some of us are permitted to practice advanced versions of the beginning postures. This is called guillotine and it's done in the heat of the standing series when death feels like a welcome gift. Not that my face gives that away. The point is, being in the most uncomfortable posture you can imagine forces you to find comfort in the most uncomfortable of positions. If you can stand like this in 115 degrees of heat with no water and hold the stillness, you can do anything, anywhere.

Number 3: Your body is sacred. It's all you've got to keep you here on earth with those you love most. This sentiment is something I've lived with for many years. But I always used it as an excuse to go running, when I was honestly wearing my joints down and NOT really treating my body in the best way possible. Don't get me wrong, cardio is good, but too much impact on the joints without a balance of other forms of exercise will get you in trouble in the long run. Not pun intended. After a decade of distance running, my knees would light up in pain after just a mile or two of running. I could barely cross my legs, let along pull out an elaborate lotus posture like this one here. Your joints really tell the most accurate story of how you've treated the sacred body that was given to you. Treat them to yoga and they will repay you twenty fold

Number 4: Most of the yoga is found in the process of letting go. One very fascinating thing that became more and more apparent during our intense training days is that the harder you try, to least likely you are to succeed. That may sound rather depressing, but I realized quickly that if I'm only focused only on the touching the head to the feet (for example) then I'm not opening myself up to the beauty of the process, and therefore not really ready to touch the head to the toes...

Number 5: The moment you do let go, you let nature do its work. Once you do learn to truly let go and clear your mind of those goal-oriented thoughts, the perfection comes rushing in. When I actually let go and breathed into this posture, I let my body float into the form with less and less effort. Once you start to see this, you realize how much your mind sets limits on your physical being. If you let your own ideas about what your body can do go, the sky's the limit.

Number 6: Example is a phenomenally sound form of learning. This is Jessica. I am the observer in the background. During much of my training the past few months, I've been observing both Jessica and Courtney (my other teacher) at the studio and learning from their movements and words daily. It's amazing how your muscles can truly grasp a concept and mimic it after it's been observed. Although this posture is not one I've felt yet, I know I'm one step closer having seen it done by my great teachers.

Number 7: This shit hurts. Also, Number 7 1/2, my butt looks grossly square in this picture. I didn't know either of these things before I started practicing Bikram Yoga. Whenever I've seen people doing stuff like this in the circus or on the cover of Yoga Journal, they have this look of complete peace and resolution on their faces. Now I realize it's a survival mechanism. Kind of like that quotation about having to laugh to keep from crying. The hurt has taught me that the source of most physical pain is based on your body's old patterned thoughts of what is possible and what is not possible. Separating the emotional pain of doing something very scary from the physical pain is very difficult to do. I suspect this is mainly due to the fact that it's all emotional pain. Learn to rationalize that and you can do anything.

Number 9: I am not above a little help from my friends arnica, menthol, and epsom salt. This is me spreading a cooling gel on my back after several hours of bending. Although I'm very much into yoga and learning about the mind/body connection, some stuff you just can't will away like you may have hoped. I'll get there, but in the meantime, I think that spoiling yourself with some serious R & R sometimes is perfectly in order.

Number 10: Friends are beyond critical. This may seem silly to bring up in the middle of a listing about powering through physical feats, but it's really not. Sure you can do it FOR yourself, but doing it WITH yourself is a sad matter altogether. No man is an island - especially when being tossed about the sweaty world of Bikram Yoga's advanced training. Some days I laughed, some days I cried. Really, seriously cried like a freakin' baby from the pain and exhaustion of the experience. If I didn't have anyone next to me who understood my own special brand of psycho, how would I have made it?

Number 11: You must be willing to fall out over and over and over again in order to become the posture. I am only just beginning to grasp this concept. I wanted so badly to learn how to do tiger, which begins with a headstand. I could see it, taste it, smell it. I dreamt myself doing it during the competition. But the one (MOST crucial) thing I didn't do was let myself be willing to fall enough. I focused way too much on perfect execution, and felt frustrated when I didn't get there right away. I'm sure I'll get there, but I need to first resign myself to the humble beginnings of falling countless times before the posture starts to happen.

Number 11: Always be grateful for what you are capable of in this very moment, and learn to be humbled by your own abilities from one instant to the next. Throughout my Bikram Yoga experience, I've learned that no two days are alike when it comes to my postures. One day my bow will be phenomenally open, the next, my rabbit is super loose. One month, I fall out of standing bow every 5 seconds, the next, I hold it perfectly still with little effort. When I first began practicing, I couldn't help but do little victory dances in my head after holding certain poses with what I thought was expert precision. Over the past few months, I've learned it's really quite the opposite. Those who are willing to fall out, stretch beyond their original capacity, plunk down on their ass in awkward pose, and fall out of standing head to knee if it means they touched their forehead for an instant, those are the experts. They have resolved themselves to a state of constant learning, truly giving themselves over to their own capacity from day to day. In this shot, I was stretching out my back because I was in a lot of pain and didn't feel loose enough. I had to let go of the fact that just a month before, this same posture was ridiculously easy for me.

Number 12: Anyone can do this. One of the most valuable lessons I've had the fortune of discovering is just how simple and straightforward true success in any endeavor can be. If you see something and it calls out to you in some strangely cosmic way, then go for it. If sprinting on a track gets you excited, sign up for a team. If touching your toe to your chin sounds like an amazing accomplishment, go for it. There's a reason it's calling out to you. It's because you somehow have already envisioned yourself doing it. It is a big part of your truth in life. Believe me, it doesn't have to make sense. The tricky part is, realizing that it really is pretty simple math: you put in the hours of effort, you get the reward. And by hours I mean days, weeks, months. It's a little less romantic when you think of it this way, but there is comfort in knowing that you too can have what it is you want. Just resolve to take the first step.

Number 13: Opening your heart to yourself and the world is a tragically beautiful motion. Especially on the floor of a mall. To me, the most fascinating posture in Bikram's beginning series has always been the back bend done during the half moon series (which is not this pose). I personally suspect that any posture having to do with opening your heart is extremely brave. It takes strength, flexibility, and trust beyond measure. I've always been rather closed to the world, and anyone who wasn't an immediate family member or significant other was rarely allowed to see very close to me. Doing this yoga has taught me to expose myself more than I ever could have imagined before, and I am a much better person for it.

Number 14: Without your loved ones, nothing else really freaking matters. I thought I wanted to go to this competition alone. I thought that having my boyfriend in the audience would be too distracting and make me too nervous. I was so wrong. Seeing his smiling face all throughout the event gave me so much joy that by the time I went up to do my routine, I didn't really even care much about the details of who won and how. It made me think back to my sports team days and how much joy I would get out of seeing my parents sitting on the sidelines of one of our (me and my twin sister's) softball games, or the one time my older sister and her awesomely cool college friends showed up at my high school track meet to cheer me on. I have no idea who won or what my scores were during these events. I do remember the soaring feeling in my heart of being observed by someone who cared only about who I was and very little about how I performed. I'm not sure there's a better feeling in this world.