This summer I’ve got 8 weeks off…..but not sure what it might hold. I’ve got the pennies saved and the time, but…2 questions
1. will Sharath be there in Mysore, the schedule only has it until April. Does anybody know?
2. If you cannot do Marichyasana D, how does it work? Stop there and then go to Urdva Dhanurasana?
Ideas…
I’d been working Bakasana into the Primary after Utkatasana and been working on moving my knees further up my arms and getting my arms straight. Playing around with it tonight, it started out as per normal with my arms bent:
But then very naturally with a little bhanda lift and a straightening of my arms, it came up:
I did Bakasana B (jumping into it) and landed it but with my knees around my elbows. It was however landed and that was a big step. More to work on
Things have been busy and the blogging has suffered, but practice has been great. For a long time, I’d been doing yoga in the afternoons during the week, but for the past 5 weeks, I’ve been doing it in morning. But this means I need to get up at 430 to be done by 630. I’d done it before for weeks on end, but always seemed to migrate back to the afternoons. However, it is working very well now on this schedule and I’m not tired during the day but I do run out of steam around 830pm at night. My blogging time was usually around 9pm, so hence the lapse.
For the past 3 weeks, the jumpback has been stirring and I knew it was my form rather than strength. I’ve had a hard time bringing my chest down to the floor once my feet had come up into Lolasana. It has been this mental block, and although I could reason it in my head, I could just not get my body to follow suit. But today, I got home and wanted to play around with it. The first couple looked like they have been looking (still with the slight toe touch)
The guy in the rocket II video has got a pretty nice looking jump back so I got it out and this is what happened:
Just that little difference of really bringing my chest down and moving it slightly forward made the difference. Of course, I tried it several times and only got it that once, but at least the ground work is laid.
Handstand has also been a running theme. I can do it on grass or a beach no problem, but I’ve got this fear of hard floors. My yoga room is small too so I’m weary about the walls and other things around me. It’s odd since I don’t crash and burn, but twist out if (see video below), but for a long time not liked that feeling of when you are up and start to go over when I’m on a hard floor. So like the jumpback, I know it’s all been a mental thing and not physical. But, I’ve been working on getting over it and today popped up into a controlled handstand:
This is also a look at twisting out of a handstand once it goes south for anybody with the same fears….
…was how practice was today. It was one of those days that when you are lying in Savasana and it almost seems like you can feel the curvature of the Earth (which I know is odd since I’m on the 11th floor). But still…that feeling of total hard work, followed my total release. I’ts 7 hours after practice right now, and I feel like I’m stoned..such a good mood
For the past 5 weeks, I’ve been strictly doing a morning practice (I was practicing from 4-6pm since I had to be at work too early). But, since coming back from Mexico, I’ve been waking up at 4am, so for the past 2 weeks, I’ve just switched to a 430-630am practice and now it’s stuck. I do go to bed at 9am on the dot (8:30 some nights), but other than that, my days are normal and I’m not tired at all. The only think I”m missing is staying up until about 10 like before, but all I did was either listen to podcasts or books and perhaps watch a show on the computer. It wasn’t really productive time, so it’s working out well.
Some nice surprises each week and it seems like my body is undergoing a lot of changes all at once:
–Sirsasana A now has no little hop but I can now lift off the floor and hold for 4 minutes followed by 10 breathes in Sirsasana B and then Sirsasana C with toes right to the floor and then back up. Seems like it’s all there now
–I’ve been playing with second series and working on leg behind the head. My heels can now rest on top of my head.
–Bakasana B is possible with a short jumping distance. A big one puts me on the floor with a graceful crash
On another note from the mental side, I’ve been having some questions/problems dealing with all of the things that Ashtanga brings up with body awareness and this sensory overload. As well as other personal questions about things that yoga has brought up, I looked up yoga counselling and found Chad Hurst who is a life coach and certified Ashtanga teacher by SKPJ in San Fran. We had our first Skype session today. Fantastic and I”m amazed at just how insightful some people can be. It’s not cheap, but well worth it. His site is Herst Wellness and his yoga shala is Mission Ashtanga. I hope to practice with him this summer for 6 weeks when in the Bay Area.
I’ve been messing up my pictures and videos lately with Linux not being my friend lately. I’ll get it set up better this weekend.
Have a look at this article with Mysore being the number 4 spot to visit (with a focus on Ashtanga) in 2010. surprisingly, Seoul is number 3..
After I got home from my run and chest pains, I told my wife and she was remarkably calm. But we did decide to call a doctor. In Tunisia, they are fond of house calls and for the price of 40 dollars, I got an American trained, English speaking doctor to come to my house complete with a portable EKG machine. I had told her what had happened and with a pensive “hmm”, she went about her check-up. The blood pressure was 140/100 (high) but everything else was normal, including the EKG. She said that if I had had any episodes with my heart, it would show up in the monitor, but it was healthy. The last test was the blood work that I got done the next day and over the phone she told me that a lot of my levels were too high. She asked a lot of family health questions about stroke/heart conditions etc, but nothing like that ran in my family. So she said that it was most likely my lifetstyle–too much drink and too much smoke.
I knew I was lucky and deep down I wanted to be healthy. But that want to change and the long hours of each evening while trying not to crack open a beer too opposing forces. AA wasn’t a real option since I’m not religious nor was there anything like that in Tunisia (or at least not in English). I also didn’t want to make this public to a group of people and looking back now, I really revere just how brave AA members are. And when I say not wanting to be public, I didn’t share with my wife that I wanted to stop my addictive compulsions.
For the next few weeks, I didn’t stop drinking or smoking, but I thought about it a lot. I became really amazed at just how engrained it had become in my life and life style.
–get home from work-have a smoke
–dinner with wine
–TV after some beer (mixed in with some puffs on the balcony
–perhaps something harder just before bed to help me sleep
And that was just the day to day. What about the weekends that involved dinner parties, afternoon BBQs and the after bike ride beers/smokes with several friends on Sunday mornings. I was entrenched and was looking at Everest. After several weeks of continuing with my habits yet racked with guilt every time I opened a beer or puffed on a smoke with the thoughts that I was going to die, I decided I need to try something. Anything.
I got home on a Thursday after work at about 3pm , and normally i would head to the balcony and have 4-6 drags on my Marboro Light. I wanted to try and hold out on today. I told myself that it was OK to give in but at least try. I was completely out of sorts and did not know how to fill this time without my cigarette hit. I walked around, tried to use my computer and then walked around again. Minutes were like hours and after about 11 minutes, I knew I had to smoke. I got one and went outside to light up. But before I did, I just smelled it and looked at it.
The only difference between being smoker or drinker is that the substance is on the inside of your body and not the outside. As long as it was in my hand on the outside of my body and not in my lungs, I still hadn’t caved. As long as that beer was in the fridge and not in my liver, I still hadn’t caved. Just the act of me bending my arm up to my mouth was what made me consume. But I lit up, and crossed that barrier from outside to inside and from sober to not. I did hold out about 15 minutes and felt the scream from within. I had deprived “it” for 15 long minutes and “it” got upset. But that was 15 minutes longer that I had ever done and 15 minutes of suffering that “it” didn’t like.
—this post has taken forever due to problems with Linux—I had video, but had to covert to pics….frustrating and sorry for the poor set up but I gave up–
Handstanding has hit a bit of a plateau with going from easy kickups and holding, to doing half handstands with jumping from downdog, to totally wiping out with a simple jump forward in Surya B (have a look for a good chuckle at the bottom_
I’ve been feeling very bendy for the past 4 weeks or so, but then watch myself on video and go ugh. I think video taping oneself should be outlawed since I feel great during the practice, but then see how it looks. Not that I’ve done it, but it’s what I think video taping oneself having sex would be like. But I do think it is an invaluable tool to help you see the reality of your postures and it helps see ones strengths and weaknesses in order to get deeper into the asanas and more importantly, avoid injury.
I’ve been working a lot on backbending and although my UD is not up to snuff yet, I’ve been practicing Ustrasana, Laghu Vagrasana and Kapotasana to help open my front.
And I’ve finally got a Chakrasana, that works, doesn’t bother my neck and is controlled:
Wanted to ask about if you had to rate each practice over a 6 day cycle, what percentage would you allot for physical effort on each of the days. I know that this is a hard question and varies each week and each day depending upon how your body feels, but generally for me, I’ve got some trends. Teachers I’ve had recommend working out at 90% of your ability to allow a buffer for injury and the ability for your body to heal in a 24 hour cycle. After a rest day, a 6 day cycle starts to look like this (again, this changes but for the sake of argument):
Day 1-90%
Day 2-85-90%
Day 3-80-85%
Day 4 (I’m usually a little achy somewhere so I tend to do a light work out here) -50%
Day 5-80-85%
Day 6 (I like to finish strong just before the rest day)-90%
I’d be curious to hear how others view their practice cycle.
Backbends are the focus of the end of my practice. I finish at Supta Padangusthasana and work on various back strengthening and bending asanas. I’m opening in the chest as much as possible and holding if for 5 slow breaths in each asana. Seems to be improving. I know my arms are not quite stratight in UD and feet a bit out of whack (Susan 
)
On a tech note, I use mostly Linux. I’m a tech-geek and love computers. To be honest, I have a windows machine, a Linux machine and my work provides me with a Macbook. So I ‘m never very sure which corner I need to click to close a program (geek joke). I like Linux the best since it is not feeding the corporations of Microsoft nor Mac (but I do love iPods). With Linux, there is a photo program called Cheese (much like Photo Booth on a Mac). The advantage of Cheese is that it lets you take burst photos. So you can set the progam to take a picture every certain amount of seconds. In faster moving asanas and jumpbacks (like in the seated series), I can set it to take a picture every second (up to 100 pictures or 1.4 mintues). In the slower asanas (like in the closing series), I can set it to take pictures every 10 or so seconds. So why not just shoot video? This saves a lot of cutting/snipping/editing of video and takes up a lot less space while still giving a pretty good look at your posture/position in the asanas. The downside is that it makes these annoying picture cue noises when it takes a picture so you have to turn the sound off.Here’s a look at Sarvangasana (I cut out a few in the middle since there’s no need to look at 30 pictures of shoulderstand–I use Gurugi’s closing sequence here and hold for 20 long breathes), Halasana and Karna Pindasana:
I use it about once or twice a month and I find it a really useful tool for the home practice.
….was the biggest, single worst purchace I ever made. Have a look:
Sweet ride eh? I bought this car when I lived in Colombia (I spent 10 years there) and saw this great looking car for sale one day for 2000 USD. Took it for a test ride, the mechanic told me I’d never have to touch a screw on it (I never found that specific screw, but I did manage to have to touch all of the other screws in the F^^%^% car) and people loved to ride in it. I bought in when I lived in a city called Bucaramanga which is very flat but surrounded by the Andes so to drive around you never went up any kind of hill-unless you left the city). A month later I moved to the famous Medellin, home of Juan Pablo Escobar, plastic surgery world headquarters and quite possibly the hilliest city next to San Francisco.
So, why the hell am I blogging about this car in a yoga blog. Let me get a few things straight. The car ran well in a controlled environment (slow down the road, no hills and no traffic). This was Bucaramanga. The car did not run well outside of this environment (fast, hilly and in traffic). This was Medellin. When I took the Mercedes to Medellin, I thought it would be great like it was in Bucaramanga. But the hills in Medellin, quickly exposed every weakness that it had and quickly led me into an accident, a year long abandoment of the car in my driveway and then the sale of it at price that was about the equilivant to the price of a tank of gas.
What I found out from my recent 3 week trip to Mexico was that I don’t run so well outside of my routine anymore. When I have a set structure, I’m great. But when I get moved to a new area, I start to crack. I’ve always been a little obsessive about things in my life, but in the past 6 months, any sort of break in my routine-specifically my yoga practice-really knocks me off guard. My whole planning becomes around moon days, rest days and the time of day when I can practice. So naturally, when I’m not in my normal routine, all of this can become jeopardized and I start to really stress about missing a practice, or being too tired to practice due to jet lag, or other travel complications. When i say stress, I mean I really fixate organizing everything around the yoga. My poor wife.
Yoga gives so much, but I feel that I’m developing some sort of OCD (or at least yoga has exposed it). Yoga is balance, but I feel that I need to work more on finding that internal equilibrium. Any others suffering from the same sort of thoughts?
On a happy note, the first practice of 2010 was great. It was back in my yoga room in Korea with 2 very cool occurances:
-head to floor in Prasarita Pattotasana
–down dog jump into half handstand to hold for 5 breaths.
Happy new year to all and let’s hope I don’t follow the same path as my poor, 1967 Mercedes.
