And So Begins 2nd

I do indeed think the intercostals are improving and dare I say recovered. The reason I say this is because I had an even less gimpy practice yesterday and was given pashasana and survived!

I’ve been secretly wanted to start second series for quite some time now. And if I’m going to be truly honest, I’ve been jealous of all my shalamates that are currently practicing second series. I feel like there are more advanced practitioners in the room than there are beginners, not that this is a competition or anything. Granted my primary isn’t perfect but it has come a long way (thank you hamstrings for your cooperation) and I think my back bending would be even further along if I wasn’t sidelined for a month due to my intercostals injury.

So after setu bandasana I was putzing around on my mat very slowly preparing to vinyasa and proceed to back bending when JB came over and said “we’re going to try a new pose today called pashasana”. I wanted to squeal with excitement but I didn't only in my head. Before giving me the pose he said something along the lines of “given your recent instability in the chest area, it’s very important that you breathe getting into and during this pose”. My internal response was "ok how bad can this actually be". I've seen numerous shalamates contort themselves into this pose and it didn’t seem so bad. I knew that getting my heels to the floor would be a challenge and I knew that the bind would be difficult as well. What I wasn’t prepared for was the intense twist that soon followed thanks to the “help” of JB. Holy smokes batman. My second attempt tomorrow will be interesting.

After that came krounchasana and again I was thinking to myself, how bad can this actually be. All of the forward bends in primary series surely had to have lengthened my hamstrings no? Well needless to say I was once again shocked by the difficulty and intensity of the pose. Even JB made a comment about it being a relatively challenging pose. And to think that I've been looking forward to being given kapo and I can barely handle the first two poses of intermediate.

It is nice though to have something new to work on once again which will give my practice a renewed focus. However, I'm not looking forward to the new aches and pains associated with working on new poses nor am I looking forward to the longer practices.