Back to My Roots

I did a bit of yoga tourism this weekend and opted for a vinyasa class in lieu of a regular Saturday practice of an oil bath. In an essence I went back to my roots because the class was with one of my favorite vinyasa teachers. I really enjoy his class because he has an ashtanga and iyengar background and he does great sequencing in his classes. One of the reasons why I can't bear most vinyasa/power vinyasa classes any more is because most of the teachers at the studio can't sequence a class to save their lives. I'm not the most flexible yogini out there but give me enough warm up postures beforehand and the odds of me approximating a posture requiring lots of flexibility increases.

Today it was back to mysore class and overall it was good. I had some soreness in my hips and upper back from some of the poses we did yesterday but nothing that really negatively affected my practice. I did notice that my forward bend in the surya namaskars felt deeper than usual and I'm not sure what to attribute that to.

For the past week or so I've been working on binding my wrists in all of the marichasyna poses with mixed results. I can bind consistently in A and C and in B I've been able to wrist bind on the right side only. I've only attempted a wrist bind in my head when it came to D because my ability to actually get into that pose consistently can be a bit touch and go. Today as I held my fingers on the right side in marichyasana D one of the assistants came over and suggested the I grab my wrist. I gave it a feeble attempt and told him that it wasn't going to happen today. After some instruction on which hand grabs which wrist I made a second attempt and to my surprise was able to grab my wrist. I attempted the left side as well and I was shocked when I was able to do it. After exiting the pose the assistant said "the next thing you want to work on is grabbing your shin to deepen the twist." I told him that I would think about it for the next couple of days and that all I really wanted to think about in the moment was my little victory.

When it came time to practice drop backs I tried several times against the wall then moved to the middle of my mat. I tried unsuccessfully to drop back two times before I found myself getting completely frustrated and on the verge of tears. I thought I would be able to do assisted but I was such a hot emotional mess at that point that I opted out. I'm not a big cryer at least not in public which is why I'm going to take the opportunity to blame today's emotional breakdown on my pending ladies holiday.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Skip Day

It's a rare day when I skip practice and I usually only skip when I'm travelling or due to LH. When my alarm goes off in the morning I usually spring out of bed after pressing snooze once. However, when it's LH time just finding the energy to press snooze is problematic. So today was on of those days. I had the choice to either drag myself to the shala half tired and be tired for the rest of the work day or skip practice and hope that the extra sleep would do me good.

I went with the latter and I kind of regret that decision because as I sit here and type this I can barely keep my eyes open.At least if I practiced today and felt like this afterwards, I would at least feel like I accomplished something with my morning. Lesson learned I guess.

I do think that today's tiredness is a result of my pending LH but I have a sneaking suspicion that those second series poses that I've added to my primary routine are partly to blame as well. I'm hesitant to type that  because it's only five new poses but I do think there is some truth to it. Prior to starting second series my practice would leave me energized and ready to face the day. Whenever JB would adjust my hands closer to my heels in final back bending would leave me buzzing for hours. Practice these days is reminiscent of when I first started practicing mysore style and I would arrive to the office and it would be painful just to lift my eyes and say good morning to my colleagues. I hope this phase passes soon.