Mountain Peak to Supta K

I climbed the ashtanga mountain and alighted at the peak of Supta K. Or Supta Kurmasana to be exact, which is translated Reclining Tortoise Pose. Your supposed to feel reclined and relaxed, kinda like Kino looks in this picture. Not quite for me just yet as it's still a work in progress! But I love working towards this awesome pose. As it's one of the postures considered the peak in the ashtanga primary series. And just looking at it you can see why. Legs behind the head ~ oh ya! Who wouldv'e thunk it. But sometimes when I'm good and warmed up in my Mysore class ~ many moons ago now, ha! ~ I could get my fingers to clasp on my back and my feet to cross in front of my head all by meself. Thank you very much. Haven't perfected the feet cross OVER my head yet. But it's the journey that counts. The other fun thing about it too is that this is NOT the end of the challenge. Oh, you thought we were peaked, eh! Not yet, my friend. There's still the exit out. Which requires great bhanda, torso, abdominal lift control and balance to unravel oneself, place hands on floor, lift up, up, UP into tittibasana, then lift up, up, UP, some more ~ oh you still thought this was over eh, uh, uh! ~ to bring feet around to bakasana and ~ pièce de résistance ~ jump back to chataranga! Et voila! lol! But I digress ...

Peak to Supta K Class

I took this online ashtanga class with a great ashtanga teacher, Jodi Blumstein, all the way from Santa Monica, California in my very own living room with an amazing online studio called www.yogaglo.com. Ah, the marvels of technology!

I decided on this class as it was a short-n-sweet primary, stopping at my fav pose that has all the challenging binds, flexibility and hand balancing a girl who wanted to excel in gymnastics but failed abominably could ever want, without the dread factor of a full slog of primary, which I wasn't in the mood for. This was the ticket. And I loved it. We had a lovely shortened sun sal A & B then did just the fundamental standing postures up to parshvottanasana (when you go beyond primary you only do the basic standing postures). Then we did just the right amount of seated postures leading up to Supta Kurmasana skipping some of them. She wisely chose the one's that would limber us in the right places for supta though. Which was great. I made sure to do almost all the vinyasa's between sides whereas they just picked up between sides, as I wanted to keep the heat in my body for the peak K posture which is KEY. Though I fudged a wee bit just to keep my wrists safe. As it was, I was warm and sweaty but not as warm and sweaty as in my Mysore class. So what with that, and a lack of practice, shoddy me, I wasn't able to do my famous finger wrap and feet wriggle-n-shimmy-cross-over (see Daylene's first version of Supta K ~ NOT her second, lol! ~ as that's mine when I'm warm and ready in Mysore class, not bad eh). Oh well, it was definitely still satisfying to have gotten there almost full on. 

And I had a nice practice with the exit too. Lift, lift, lift and got those feet back into a sad little bakasana before a flop down and shimmy back to chatarunga. Haha! The exit needs ALOT of work still. It's very challenging because you need ALOT of lift in your torso in order to land you knees properly positioned on the forearms to be able to jump back (see again Daylene's knee position high up on her forearms and the lift she did in her torso in order for that to happen). The thing is, it's really easy to position your knees properly in bakasana if you're just doing it straight from the floor, but NOT when you're coming from tittibasana which is that straight leg position you get into before moving your legs back into bakasana. Otherwise your knees are too off the sides of the forearms which makes it impossible to attempt the jump back at all. So you flop off every time. Lift is imperative here and cannot be faked. That's why I love this posture because there's no impostering. You gotta work that lift. So it's great for practice. Lol!

... so practice lift and all is coming.