Finally I made it to mysore! Every time I make it to mysore I feel like I climbed Mount Everest. Don't know why but I feel like I accomplished a feat. Hopefully it will get easier for me and a little less daunting the more I find my schedule groove and practice groove. Have I told you my nemesis is stamina and endurance. And ashtanga works that to my very core that weights and cardio do not. But I digress ...
Here's my proud notables:
• Felt smoother in my practice and I wee more stamina. Just a wee. Woohoo! I can now see how this could get stronger and less arduous AND more shall I say meditative for me.
• Totally missed out parshvakonasana and the twist! And that's such a fundamental posture in standing! Thought I was doing so well in my flow and only realized when I went to bed that I skipped it. Haha!
• Bhuja pidasana was nothing to write home about. Was able to wrap my legs and tilt a bit but nowhere near the ground yet. Still worried about my wrists. Then exit was a total disaster. Totally flubbed getting my legs into bakasana and then it was just a droop down from there.
• However, I redeemed myself in supta konasana which I did all by myself! It was rather kinda awesome even though I was so looking forward to S.'s assist because she likes and I LOVE when she folds my feet behind my head. I just LOVE it! I'm thinking freak is she really doing that and is my legs really letting her??? I always feel like WOW I have arrived! I NEVER in my wildest dreams thought I could do that. And also it's such a stereotypical yogic tied-up-in-knots-sorta-contortion-pose that I always felt unattainable to the lay innocent that it thrills me to no end that I'm halfway there! lol! But anyway she didn't do that famous assist and just let me do my thang. And I did! I was able to not only finger bind but wiggle my feet side-by-side and as I eye-balled it I felt that I could just somehow wiggle my right foot on top of my left and wouldn't ya know it with her verbal encouragement I caught that last wind to do just that and totally bound my feet! It was pretty satisfying I must say! And my exit was way better, was able to get both legs into bakasana and do an almost jump back into chatarunga. Not bad.
• Urdhva dhanurasana was an eye opening experience. I totally flubbed the first try. Couldn't get up for the life of me and thought I was a goner for the next 2. And was hoping I could just slip by it. No chance! But for some inexplicable, what I can only say miraculous reason, I was able to push up with unusual super human strength the next two making very reasonable for me wheels. I was flabberghasted! Totally amazed where all this strength came from out of nowhere!
• By headstand I'm usually at my worst energy wise. But I once again surprised myself. Number one I was able to go up with floating straight legs. Yeah! I was too wankered the last time to do that. Number two, even though my teacher spotted she didn't have to touch me at all, I was able to balance on my own. But then I bailed when trying to do the 90º hold. So what does an amazing teacher do when she's trying to build your stamina. Get right back on that damn horse and do it again! And so I did with her wise encouragement to lower not to 90º but to as low as I can hold it for to build my strength and endurance.
This is why I LOVE mysore and keep on coming back to my personal Mount Everest!! So I can make my mountain a molehill!!
Very refreshing and surprisingly filling in the morning. And it makes me feel like I'm starting my day out on the right foot and getting in a good quota of my veggies, fruits, anti-oxidants, vitamins, omega-3's and super foods. What a great way to start my day!
Along with my veggies and berries — I only use berries to stay low glycemic since I have a severe sugar sensitivity, can't even use stevia(!), though in the pic above I cheated with a sliver of orange as I was wrestling with a cold trying to get it's grubby hands on me — here's a sampling of some of the superfoods I like to put in my green smoothie:
I like to add some chard grown straight from my organic windowbox garden on my balcony. How neat is that!
And here's the final product pulverized in my amazing NutriBullet. It got darker because I used some blueberries and dark berry powders. Depending on the fruit (i.e., light fruit) and greens (i.e., baby spinach) you can get a really beautiful bright green drink:
Don't let the looks fool you, it tastes absolutely divine and SO nutritious! Because the cell walls of the veggies and fruits are pulverized in the high powered blender it's literally like your giving yourself an intravenous shot of nutrition. Your body absorbs and assimilates it way better than chewing! Yet you still get the beneficial fiber which slows a bit of the rate of absorption so your not getting such a glycemic load on your system.
I used to think it was all a bit of hype the better absorption with blending than with chewing. But I found out quickly that though I can eat baby spinach salads, yet for the longest while (about 3 years) I couldn't drink blended baby spinach or chard even. The magnesium in them was WAY too bioavailable this way and I was getting way too vivid and trippy dreams from the magnesium overload. I'm very sensitive to magnesium can ya tell! Lol! Now that I've finally built up a tolerance I can blend them to my hearts content.
My Green Smoothie Recipe
Here's my base smoothie recipe. Note that I choose organic whenever possible. Since I'm ingesting this everyday, I need to be as organic as I can make it otherwise you're just defeating the purpose ingesting so much pesticides day in and day out. For liquids I usually use milk or unsweetened vanilla almond milk:
Veggies:
• Greens to rotate: kale – great for iron, chard, baby spinach, collards, romaine, arugula, watercress, go wild)
• Baby carrots
• Cucumber: sometimes, very refreshing, apparently great for hair
• A sliver of avocado: gives a lovely creaminess to the smoothy!
Fruits:
• Frozen organic berries: just a little for a touch of sweetness and flavour, it's low glycemic and sometimes safe for me to have, organic whenever possible
• Orange: 1/8th slice, if I have a cold
• Mango: when cheating, gives great flavour and a lovely creamy texture
Superfoods:
• Goji berries
• Maca powder
• Spirulina powder: I like Pure Hawaiian Spirulina by Nutrex, the freshest taste ever! High in protein and iron, fantastic blood builder, etc. I'll alternate this with barleygrass or wheatgrass.
• Sprouted ground flax with cranberries: for omega-3's, sometimes I just grind my own
• Vitamin C: Sodium Ascorbate powder: to absorb the iron in my kale, as I have low iron stores
• Whey Protein Powder: Great muscle, collagen, hair, skin and nails builder! My nails have never been so diamond hard and grow so fast in my life. And my muscles, holy cow, respond super-fast to weight work with it and maintain their shape longer. Amazing! I try to buy only cold-processed so it doesn't denature the proteins. And also I try to look for whey that's high in glutamine for gut repair and high in BCAA's for great muscle recovery. For strict vegetarians there's a great variety of non-animal based one's to choose from.
And no, I'm not talking about shorts this time. It's because I did nada! Nada thing! Because I had a super-duper wonderful weekend and then celebrated my awesome nephew's birthday last night. So there!
One's still gotta schedule in some fun now and then. Life's too short! No pun intended.
P.S. Maybe hitting Mysore tomorrow night. If I can muster my lazy sitbones back into gear after basking in the afterglow!
Well, I got my sweat on last night and it was
a-flyin! Did my Cathe Friedrich step aerobics with her Athletic Step dvd and
her oldie but goodie Step Works.
For some reason her warmup in Step Works is so
namby-pamby that I avoid it at all costs. Which is so out of character for her
because almost always her workouts are amazing from start to finish. So I
replaced it with a nice shortie-but-goodie warmup from her Athletic Step dvd.
Plus added for good measure a nice flowy stretch from my fav Namaste Yoga’s
season 1, Episode 11’s forward fold, low lunge, to splits flow. As I’m trying
to open my hips and hamstrings for forward folds and front splits. I wanna do
the front splits again! Is it wrong!
I was able to do it for a short time in ballet
as a kid but didn’t maintain it so I lost it fast. Now in my “old” age I want
to do it again this time for keeps. So, it’s one of my practice research
postures that I try to include twice a week along with hip openers such as
baddha konasana, pidgeon pose, and double pidgeon pose (of which I’m attrocious
at!) But my mysore teacher added it in to replace lotus as I can only do half
lotus since my right hip is a work in progress. So lots of baddha and double
pidgeon to work rotation in the hip for now. Methinks I’ll do a post on my
research “workshop” practices in the evenings. More posts! Yeah!
But, I digress …
It was an awesome cardio practice. Very fun and
I’m aiming to build my VO2 max and cardio lung capacity slowly but surely.
Still got a ways to go, as 2 years ago I was doing Step Works with no stopping
or little taking it down a notch. But as a result of my knees (bad adjustment
in ashtanga which caused my patella problem to resurface) and achilles probs in
the past 1.5 years I haven’t been able to put in too much cardio. Now that I
just started back in the past 2 months, I find I’m ramping up rather quickly
going from low impact, steady state to high impact with intensity blasts quite
quickly. Which is awesome. Though I do notice the difference as I need to take
it down a notch and pace more to build the VO2 max again. And I have to break
to catch my breath! Woo! But’s it coming along faster than I expected! Yeah! And
I see another post on VO2 Max itching to come out. So all in all it was a great
session.
Then of course I always post practice ice my
knees and achilles. As a result of my patella-femoral diagnosis years ago
(brought on by an overzealous trainer having me do super-heavy squatting which
popped my patella’s, life as I know it has never been the same! Oh well! As my nephews like to say, "That's life!") and achilles tendonitis more
recently it’s just a given and a no-brainer-auto-pilot thing now.
And finally, finally, I actually looked almost like it! Awesome! ...
I always wanted to fold over my legs like my many favorite yoga teachers, Kino, Kathryn Budig, Dice Iida-Klein, with a FLAT back, no space and with my face at my shins. Well, last night it was so warm and I just felt like doing some practice postures to get my flex on and by my third fold and press I kept going down and down and down and lengthening and lengthening! I thought shoot man this feels like IT! So I went to my trusty mirror (see my "Through the Looking Glass" post if anybody's watching) and low and behold I was pretty much there! Man that was SWEET! Really, really SWEET!
But never to be satisfied! This is my next Mount Olympus so that I can do Titti's!!
I thought I'd share some tips for creating your own jump back to chatarunga home practice session to build strength and coordination. I try to do this once or twice a week when my wrists allow. Unfortunately, I don't do a 5-6 day a week ashtanga practice to build strength and lift only in that way as the lovely teacher in the "Finding Your Lift" workshop did. I find without that dedicated 6-day practice, and probably even if I did, I must do extra homework in order to make the impossible possible for me. Definitely gotta get more consistent with this, cause I WANNA DO IT! I'm an ashtanga crim! Yowza!:
Here's a great vid of the wonderful Maria showing a breakdown of the motions for the full jump back in slow-mo. It's her version of slow-mo! She's slowing it down herself NOT the video. SNAP!
To Practice Cultivating This Type of Strength I:
Practice HOLDING for a number of reps and breathes:
1. Sitting in a tight tuck with shins crossed hold knees as tight as you can to chest and feet as tight as you can to sitbones. Without using arms of course. The arms should be extended in front like the beginning position of the top video. In fact your working towards holding a delicious tuck like that beginning position. Hold, hold, hold! Shewf!
2. Lolasana holds: blocks are your BF here. But notice I didn't add the extra F as eventually ya just gotta to let them GOoooo!:
• with both feet on floor
• with one foot off floor
• with BOTH feet off floor — Oooh yah, I said that right! Here's a great example of a pseudo-lolasana hold for core, lats, deltoid, hip flexor and leg strengthener from the divine, omnipresently giving, Kino:
• then the pièce de résistance: with both arms bent and feet off floor! SNAP!
P.S. I got all this info from my many youtube sightings, blog readings,
the wonderful workshop and from Maria herself. The lovely Maria Villella
has an awesome practice video for this and more. Which I have and
covet! Check it out at www.yogiclife.com/store and you can visit her at www.mariavillella.com.
Well I followed my Friends Week 1 Schedule with some few tweaks. Here's the original schedule:
If Out With Friends:
SAT: Gym Legs & Back work (See how my wrists handle the weights. Got a bit of wrist issues)
SUN: Home Practice
MON: Step (Cathe Friedrich: 4 Day Split Higher Intensity Step)
TUES: Mysore
WED: rest
THURS: Out with Friends
FRI: Home Practice
SAT: Gym Legs
Here's what I ended up doing. Still got my goals in there though I had to flipflop:
Post-Mortem:
SAT: Gym Legs & Back work (my wrists handled the weights with flying colours!) SUN: Step (Cathe Friedrich: 4 Day Split Higher Intensity Step + Namaste Yoga Season 1, Ep11, forward fold to lunge to standing splits sequence. That's such a nice flowy stretch sequence, perfect for post cardio. And my hips and hamstrings were nice and opened after jumping around. Felt amazing!) MON: rest TUES: The Rocket DVD (couldn't make it to Mysore, had to work late) WED: Friend reunion. Totally fun! THURS: Mysore (totally awesome, had the teacher all to myself at the end. Nice!) FRI: Too.Much.Grocery.Shopping.Yikes! SAT: rest SUN: The fun and fab Finding Your Lift Workshop
Here's My Lazy Flexibility Reigns Week 2 Schedule:
MON: nada! TUES: Gym Legs and Back WED: nada! THURS: Mysore FRI: hmmm ... will see SAT: hmmm ... be flexible SUN: hmmm ... flexibility reigns supreme Lol! Gotta have some lazy flexible weeks where you do what you feel. I may wake up and feel like yoga or I may wake up and feel like jumping around. And that could even change as the day wears on. Who knows my hmmm days may turn out to be VERY active AND flexible. ; )
Well actually it was a Finding Your Lift workshop but the way A., our workshop teacher, demo'd it hers was practically a levitation! No joke! Awe inspiring!! Just like those amazing lifts and holds AND changes in direction IN mid air you see on Youtube! Wow and double wow! Just like this (except she also showed how to change direction in mid-flight, and go into handstand, etc. Yowza!). The point is you wanna lift lightly and land lightly to get your float ON!:
And I got the DVD for this one:
But I digress ...
Here was the workshop breakdown and key points. I'm trying not to look at the wonderful notes she gave us — how very generous of her — as I want to only get down what I remember and not feel like I'm plagiarizing her:
Overarching Key Points and Goals:
• transfer of weight from feet to hands and hands to feet
• to lift and land lightly
• to gain lift and lightness in your practice it's important to really pay attention throughout your whole practice to your form in plank, chatarunga and any arm balancing you do as this is KEY to strengthening and stabilizing your shoulder and shoulder girdle for lightness and weight transference. Use every opportunity to employ proper form even to doing extra chatarungas in your practice, as chatarunga is the base for so many balancing postures.
Jump Back to Chatarunga:
• First she explained that "jump" is a misnomer. As it misleads you to think that your just jumping haphazardly and flinging yourself rather willynilly into space. Whereas you must think of it as a transfer of weight. Your transferring it from your feet to your hands and vice-versa. It's a deliberate and controlled jump and or lift causing the weight to transfer into your hands/arms to a hang in the air catching your balance as in a handstand/hand balance (which is really what your literally doing) then down to plank/chatarunga or straight into chatarunga. You have to have an attitude shift here.
• When you transfer your weight always think deliberately to PUSH your hands into the floor with straight arms.
• Use your fingertips to keep your balance when you catch the hanging/pause. This is the same action as in a handstand to keep you from falling forward over your body. It keeps your balance. Fingertip action is VERY important in all the hand balancing and jumps. Who would of thunk!
• Always hands FLAT down and the position will be in front of your feet in the beginning and also finding the perfect distance from feet that's best suited for you to start this approach. Keep the hands shoulder width apart and arms straight. As you get better at this and more flexible your hands can then go closer and closer to your feet until they're beside your feet.
• When jump lifting, you lean forward and with hands flat and arms straight, you transfer your weight into your hands whilst really pushing your hands into the floor you jump lift your hips and feet up, thinking of lifting hips up almost to handstand and lower to plank/chatarunga. You start by doing it bent leg and as you become super-yogi you can start moving your legs back with straight legs.
• As you get better at this you will eventually catch a balance and can hang/pause there as you're literally in a handstand balance before shifting your feet back into chatarunga. It was so cool as I was starting to find this as I was doing it. Felt amazing. Although there wasn't much of a pause, but I was getting my hips up there! Wee!
• The final phase is being able to press to lift: This is when you're the bomb-yogi and got your float on and have mega-bandha control! You can now lean forward, press the weight into your palms again transfering the weight into hands/arms, employing those mega-steal bandha's to lift your legs slowly to a pike position and lower to chatarunga! Nice!
Jump to Feet From Downdog:
• Think transfer of weight again into your hands with straight arms and hips lifted when jumping.
• It's important to look forward slightly beyond your hands to cause your feet to follow.
• Tighter hamstrings (most of us) will use bent legs. Only when your hamstrings are super/duper loose can you really do it with straight legs.
• Get your weight in your hands/arms when jumping with bandha control and allow for a controlled landing to feet.
• Use the end of the breathe out to "float" in the air to land. This allows for a compacted/controlled/bandha'd torso for floating forward.
Jump Through to Seated:
This was alot of fun. She taught us different approaches for doing it with bent legs. Too much juicy details to get into here. Sorry guys/gals. Suffice to say, she said it's actually harder and requires more strength and coordination to do it bent legs than straight legs. Yeah, as I do it bent legs and always thought that it was the kinda loser way to do it. I thought of it as the more inelegant, less practiced approach and in actual fact it's harder! Awesome! She finds the straight legged approach easier for women as they tend to have looser hamstrings and employs less strength. But you must have very loose hamstrings and can practically just fall into a perfect seated straight backed chin to shin forward fold to do this properly. Of which I do NOT have. I always had a sneaky feeling you needed that flexibility to do it anyway. In fact she can do both perfectly as she demo'd so well, but she said she purposely does mostly bent legged as she wants to train herself in strength. Neat!
Jump Back:
Misnomer again as it's a lift up swing through to lolasana to chatarunga arms lolasana to chatarunga dandasana. So many things to keep in mind AND to practice here but the essentials are:
• Try using a block in your practice half of the time to get the coordinated lift up swing through to bent arms to chatarunga
• When swinging through you need to bend your arms to chatarunga arms in order for your hips to go up at the back so you can kick your feet back to chatarunga. It's again a transfer of balance since when you bend your arms your front goes down so your hips can go UP.
• Practice holding a tight tuck, knees to chest, crossing at the shins not the ankles, holding your feet close to your butt. As that is key for being able to get your feet through. Now if I could do that, I'd be going places! I still have oodles of trouble getting my knees to tuck to my chest properly (I think weak hip flexors comes to mind) and it's still hard to tuck my feet close to my butt. Now try doing that when gravity takes over in lolasana and you'll see what I mean! lol! Oh well!
• She had us practice many types of lift up manouvers back and also to practice lolasana with two legs, then one leg on the floor, then bending arms to chatarunga with one leg on the floor (practically impossible for me!) and then using that position to jumpback with the other foot springing you back. SHEWF!! That can give me LOTS of homework!
This was an awesome workshop by an amazingly generous, knowledgable, organized teacher — I love when teacher's are methodical and organized when building our knowledge base — and was really good at getting the message across and how to incorporate it in our real day-to-day practice.
She said it took her 5 years to learn "to get her float on" as I like to say. And that the key for her and the key for us is to really incorporate those techniques throughout our practice day in and day out. And as for the jumpbacks in seated she used her blocks religiously to get the coordination and lift to swing through to bended arm to chatarunga. It was practice.practice.practice. I see a pattern here. Lol! She said it.was.time.consuming, it.was.tedious, it.was.exhausting, it.was.cumbersome but yet it was all worth the effort to build the strength, stamina, coordination, lightness and flow in the practice.
I wear shorts for yoga. I mean short shorts. Like hawt, hot yoga shorts. Like Kino shorts. And I LOVE them! I have a great excuse for baring myself so audaciously. Number one get a clean mind! Number two I wear knee braces. I have to. So there! Do you know how knee braces look under yoga pants/tights. Awful, ridiculous, bulky, undignified, tied up, suffocating and HOT! Need I say more. And I get sweltering in class. I mean I can sweat buckets! I sweat more in a yoga class than when I do a high intensity HIIT plyometric style step aerobics! No joke. So the less material I got tying me up and suffocating me (as I really feel like I'm suffocating!) the better. Yoga shorts have liberated me. I've got them in all sorts of colours, the brighter the better. Makes me feel like a happy clam and a bright sunny flower trying to turn to the sun just like in our sun salutes and postures where we turn sideways. I always like to think we're trying to turn towards the sun just like flowers. Love the analogy. I even have a black skort — a skirt and a short in one. Looks like a very cute mini-tennis skirt. Thank you Lulu! And I'm so glad I'm following in some great footsteps like Kino! She rocks them. You go gurl! ... Maybe Kino and I can start a trend to liberate all!
Praise be to HAWT, hot yoga shorts! May Kino and I rock them foreva and eva and eva!
I made it to Mysore! And I got my money's worth! Woohoo! You see I paid $40 for a newbies unlimited 1 month trial. Awesome! But one has to make it worth their wile. And I was scared I wouldn't because I left for a one week vacation just after I paid thinking I'd get one class in before I left and then would have almost 3 weeks left to make up for lost time. Well you see, as luck would have it, my good intentions flew out the window. I was just too poopered to go the one class before leaving, turned out I just wanted to have a do nothing weekend. And off I went on my travels. And of course when I got back I was just too poopered again — the vaca lag — to ramp up that quickly. I did get in a class last week and I finally got there tonight. And have now done 3 classes which would be $60 normally. So not bad. Gotta do better. But I digress ...
I got my money's worth tonight in another way. It was a beautiful sweatfest! And oh boy I sweat! My 2 amazing teachers W-O-R-K-E-D M-E O-U-T! They take no guff! lol! They make me do ALL my vinyasa's. I used to skip between sides. Not anymore! And lor it's a workout! By the time I get to janu-B the pickups and pseudu drag backs have all but dissappeared. By the mari's they're gone, never to be seen again. By then I'm planting my hands down and jumping back. But I'm still jumping through. You GO gurl! Mind you I'm still trying to gauge where the teachers are in the room that perchance maybe I can let one slip between sides here and there. They're not having it. Haha!
THE DETAILS:
Utthita hasta padangushthasana: I got a great assist with her holding my leg as I fold over and helping my hip to stay down when to the side.
Ardha baddha padmottanasana: She gave me a great modification for my wonky right knee and stiff hip. To cross my right leg over my thigh just above my knee and then bend the left knee quite a bit so I can feel the stretch in my right hip and then take a forward bend from that position. Interesting and a great beginner's way to get the hip to open.
Bhuja Pidasana: One of my fav poses but my nemisis. Keep forgetting I'm supposed to cross my right foot over my left. Feels so awkward. I like it the other way, feels more comfy and natural. But that ain't ashtanga. lol! Still can't bend all the way forward. It feels like I'm going to break my wrist. So I do have to play careful with that move as my wrists are still wonky and I don't have great flexibility in it. So of course I kept falling out. It wasn't my best presentation! So S. had me do it like three times! Awesome! Then we just worked on the exit but by that time I just couldn't manage the lift one leg to the back while wrapping the other around the arm then lifting the other leg back before jumping to chatarunga. Fell out once again. Argh! However, she was awesome, she let me redeem myself by going into bakasana and jumping back. I can do that! Wee what fun!
Kurmasana and Supta Kurmasana!: Another fav. Now that was awesome! Had S. again adjusting me and man she tied me up good and proper. Yes! My head tucked just so under my feet crossed just so. Loved it. Then I got my hands beautifully wrapped. I was able to hook my fingers. I felt sublime! And then I was able to do a beautiful lift up (by my standards) AND watch this, I did get each foot back and did an almost jump back. Yippee!!
Urdhva Dhanurasana, Chakrasana and Closing: Had the wonderful S. practically as my one-on-one teacher by then talking me through all of closing and giving me great assists (my timing was perfect as people were leaving by then, nice!) : Urdhva, still a bomb! Arms could barely even attempt to straighten, that crazy back of mine! I was just knackered, but she made me do 3 none-the-less even though the last 2 were unrecognizable. Ouch! But she gave me a beautiful paschimottanasana squish. Nice! Then she helped me learn chakrasana — a work in progress. Must learn to really push off both hands in a just PUSH IT! mindset. Yowza! Continued through closing to headstand where I did it in the middle of the room for THE first time! Yeah! Was doing really good but couldn't straight leg raise as I was wonked. But balanced nice for the full breathe count though when it came time to lower to 90° I lost my mojo. Couldn't hold for the life of me and came D-O-w-n! Oh well, my stamina's got a ways to go!
I gotta say Mysore is magic! One day "Is all a-coming" ....
I'm going to set my face like a flint! I want to make it to Mysore! I had a terrible sleep last night - a bout of insomnia - and clocked a measly 4 hrs. And then tonight I made up for it by having a wonderful night out with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. Suffice to say we had a lot of fun catching up! With that I'm exhausted! But I digress ...
I'm trying to challenge myself to keep to my schedule. Yes it's a humble one at that but its still mine. Kinda like the Bikram 30 day challenge except it's my own little personal keep to my schedule challenge. Just to see if I can. Also because I find the more consistent I am to my workout plans especially with ashtanga the incrementally easier it gets for me in the practice. I get stronger, more flowy suri's, greater stamina throughout the practice and smoother more controlled pickup/jumpthrough vinyasas. Not to say I don't have a WAYS to go in them but they just seem less arduous and clumsy. Lol! And I just get more open and that feels SO good! And thus becomes more a meditation in motion than a workout. Wish me luck!
I want to go through the looking glass. No really, I once had a most wondrous dream about going through the looking glass. And what I saw was astounding. But I digress ...
I dream of mirrors. I'm obsessed with mirrors. Specifically mirrors in a yoga class. I wish that all yoga and ashtanga classes had them not just in hot yoga and bikram. When I went to my first yoga class I was SO disappointed that there were no mirrors! How was I supposed to check my alignment! That was one of the many reasons I wanted to take a yoga class. I thought NOW I'll finally be able to really see what I look like in the postures all the way down to my toesies. You miss so much down there, all those seated postures, etc. when checking the mirror at my gym or my home mirror or even my buildings hallway mirror it was so unsatisfying as I couldn't see down there! The mirrors just weren't low enough. Can you tell I'm obsessed. I thought now, finally, in class, I'll get to see ALL! Well you can imagine my let down when looking around me there were NO mirrors. Then I found out that most yoga schools actually frown on them. You're supposed to look inward. It's a moving meditation. How can you have a moving meditation whilsts staring down your narcisistic self in a mirror. Buddha forbid! ... OMG! NOooooo! I want my mirrors!
I grew up in ballet class. They had mirrors everywhere. Holy cow batman, yoga blasphemy! No really holy cow! This was KEY to ballet. Part of our tool. You could not have a ballet school or rehearsal hall without it. This was where you could check your alignment, technique, musicality, expression. And this was sacred, sacrosanct, the holy and divine order. I grew up with this. If I didn't look in the mirror my body would play tricks on me. I'd feel like my foot and hip and back was just so. It felt right, even perfect in fact. But then I'd look in the mirror to check it out and alas what a rude revelation! Everything was off. Then correcting the alignment and expression began and telling my muscles through my eye's and brain that THIS is the way it should feel to be right. The mirror had to be my feelings as my bodies feeling's of alignment was usually wrong. It lied to me. How confusing. Ballet knew this and employed these looking glasses. We could not live without it. It's so hard now to let that go. And in fact I really can't. It's still a tool I need to correct my postures as to this day my body still tries to trick me and only the mirror and retraining my brain can correct it.
I've tried Bikram classes with mirrors and funnily enough I still could
somewhat get to a meditative groove even while mirror gazing. As it's SO
intense and the callout instructions so regulated and military precision like
that you concentrate so deeply that it still becomes that moving
trancelike meditation. I do believe there are many techniques that can
get you to the same destination.
I will never fully accept the no mirror rule. And still dream of the day I can go to an ashtanga shala with mirrors. Lol!
One thing a yogi learns is flexibility. Both physically and as a mindset. Go figure! I had my bags and mat all packed and excited about Mysore tonight but couldn't make it as I had a deadline to meet at work and of course right when it got to the crunch my computer decides to go cross-eyed! Oh well, it teaches patience, commitment, flexibility and living in the now. Still learning all of them! So I did a home practice instead with my faithful "The Rocket" dvd.
I love The Rocket it's supposed to propulse you forward through primary, second and third in lightening speed. lol! It's a fusion-mishmash series of ashtanga by Larry Schultz. And it's a lot of fun and challenging. I use it as a supplement to ashtanga to give me variation and opportunity to work on postures I'm not exposed to in primary but would still like to do like hanumanasana, side splits, the backbends of second and the hand balances of third in an accessible and approachable manner. It helps to open my back, gain lift and balance, gives me variety and really benefits me in my ashtanga practice especially in the lift/bandha aspect. Because well, you see, you need alot of bandha control and lift in hand balancing, you can't be sinking into your arms like a heavy weighted sack of potatoes. Bandha and lift come into that.
I had a great practice with it. Video'd it and all! That's the mirror thing. Felt a little stronger, more controlled and felt a wee more open too. I'm again seeing a touch more flexibility gains such as in my hamstrings and hips in hanumanasa. I was almost to the floor! Like an inch! And my face pretty much went to my shin in parshvottanasana on the right side. Wow! Left side, we won't talk about that. I did bakasana jump back, side bakasana but still can't open my legs. Yet. lol! Tried to go into bakasana from tripod headstand but my head wasn't budging! Waaaa! I used to be able to do this. Oh well 2 steps forward 1 step back. Ashtavakrasana was good and was able to do the transition back to chatarunga on right side. It was a little weak, have done better before my wrist injury. But still not bad. Still need to work on left side. My atrocious nemesis of a left side! My brain needs to learn to love left as much as right. lol!
Enjoyed the feeling of the teeny weeny incremental progress and to experience once again in tiny ways that "practice and all is coming." etc. etc. ...
Tres Leches cake. I'm still dreaming about it after binging over the weekend on my awesome homemade version. As soon as I get the pic from my cuz I'm posting it. It was that good! Now I'm trying to figure out a good excuse to make it again before my birthday party. lol! I have a thing for desserts. An absolute THING! My local cafes and bakeries knew me by name and my favorite delectables even if I called them by phone. "Oh K*** you want your ***? No probs!" before I even opened my mouth. It was getting embarrassing. But now I've developed a THING where I can't eat sugar or I SUFFAH! My life stopped! No sugar! WAaaaaa! And when I say no sugar I mean no sugar. No juices, pops, mayo, ketchup, fruits (except for berries that I can slip into my green smoothies and sometimes a quarter orange or mango, but I have to keep it on the down low), you name it, I can't have it. So I've now become the veritable Splenda home bakery chef. I know, I know Splenda's BAD but I can't have stevia as my body responds like sugar and I get wicked acne. So Splenda it is and I've been in heaven ever since. I'll post some goodies when I get a chance. But I digress ...
Backbending OR the Ramp ...
is my Mount Olympus! Check this out
Ya that's my backbend. Have you ever seen anything so sad and shallow! Humf! And no I'm not still going up, that's it, the back will budge no further. It's like pushing against a cement wall. (However, I must say in my last Mysore class I did a wicked urdhva dhanurasana! My torso just kept going up and up and up and my arms were going straighter and straighter! I thought OMG this is amazing! And I thought now this is what others must feel like when they do it. I wish there'd been a mirror to see it! That's another post. I mean the mirrors.) When I was a kid I vowed NEVER to enter a gymnastics class again because I couldn't get up in a wheel like the others that had the most beautiful flexie round wheels. Mine was more like a long rectangle just like the one above. I felt ridiculous. And of course they did it with such ease as they were pushing against a lovely flexie giving back whereas I was heave-hoeing against a brick wall. They never saw my shadow again. ... I never in my wildest dreams believed that in my deep adult age I would revisit this. Haha! Karma is a b** or God loves His jokes. But now, I don't really care. I judge my improvements against myself. Doesn't mean I don't get a twinge of longing and desire for those beautiful flexie looking bends but I've accepted that it's AOK to work where I am. And man, it's a shallow deal indeed. lol!
When I first started yoga my updogs looked like a ramp — not even a slope — no a LOW low grade ramp. I despaired! But I sucked it up. If that's what I can do that's what I can do. Be where you are! I believed I would see some improvements no matter how incremental. And now my updogs can look like a pretty good slopey bend when I'm warmed up nicely. Yeah! Not to say I don't have some excuses for my wee-wonky slopes. I like to lean on that when I feel a little down about it. I have mild scoliosis in my upper back, an S curve between my shoulder blades, which makes one shoulder a touch higher than the other. It was my ballet teacher who discovered it in class just as I started to get upper back pain from it. Just because it's mild doesn't mean the pain is mild. I also have a nice little dent in my mid-lower spine where my spine dips inward and then back out again. And not to be outdone, to add a little twist to the deal I have a literal twist just below it going to my lumbar spine. I'm thinking all those little challenges in my spine are what's making it less bendy. No wonder I have absolutely no lumbar bend. Most peoples backs that's where they get the majority of their bend from so all the good yoga teachers try to take you out of the lower spine to get you to address the upper so you don't use that area as a crutch and over tax it. BUT I have NO bend there whatsoevah! So for me, I would like to employ ALL those area's in my back for backbending. I'm still wondering if the lower twist is what causes my lumbar to resist. If you think about it if you twist a a chainlink and then try to bend it, it's just not that bendy. So maybe that's what's happening down below. However, I refuse to give up as I still believe there's some openings to be had despite these challenges. Like opening up my hip flexors, doing passive backbending on my exercise ball and over a pillowed chair, ushtrasana is a great one for me to open my back after passive backbending. And my all time fav is standing backbend. All these extra homework has really helped to open my back. And now I can see the wall behind me when I do a standing backbend whereas before I could see only the ceiling. Go figah! I tell ya, practice and all is coming.
