Friday, November 16, 2007

Day 118

It's good to be back to my practice today. I had a very nice momentum going over the previous few weeks, particularly with my early morning practices. I didn't manage to get to the mat early this morning, but my Lady's Holiday neatly coincided with a cold bug I've been fighting and I felt that the extra sleep would be good for me.

I'm a big believer in Cold FX, Vitamin C and the Neti Pot when I'm fighting a bug - combined with lots of rest and lots of water. I did all of those things and I seem to be at the end of it. The sore throat lasted less than 12 hours. The Neti Pot is my little ceramic saviour in the winter months (and during allergy season). I'm such a Neti booster that I demo that pot in my pre-reg Hatha Yoga classes once a session (if you think the idea of Neti is kind of funny, try doing it in front of 25 people! lol)

I took a long practice today - almost 2 hours - and really savoured the postures. I took out the Swenson book and reviewed the Driste for each pose and found myself reading some of his tips.

One recommendation really leapt out at me. I've been working on coming into headstand with straight legs for some time now with mixed success.

These four sentences made a gigantic yogic light bulb appear over my head (under my head? *grin*) I'll quote it:
“In order to lift the feet from the floor, it will be necessary to transfer your weight behind you. This will actually create a momentary unbalancing. This unbalancing is what will draw the feet upward. The trick is to bring the hips back to the centre line as the feet rise.”

Eureka!!! It's just like half-bend, which I can totally do. It helps to work against a wall at first, with your clasped hands about four inches away from the wall. Walk the toes in, try to keep the legs straight. Lift up through the sitbones and move the hips toward the wall, transferring the weight slight off-centre. Keep the transverse abdominus engaged and the legs will magically lift! Once they're up, move the hips back over the shoulders to centre the pose.

I was doing all of this except the weight transfer! As soon as I added that piece, the entire pose came together for me! I did it five times because I just couldn't believe how easy it was.

Gravity is my friend!

1 comment:

Mary said...

It's so cool to read about other people's lightbulb moments! I can imagine how excited you were :-)