Thursday, December 20, 2007

Day 140

Some days, my practice lasts less than an hour and a half. Other days, I goof around and loaf in my favourite poses and dawdle before the poses I don't like and my practice takes two hours. Today was one of those days.

I saved my practice for the afternoon because I didn't want to fall into the same trap I encountered yesterday (pressed for time because I had a class I needed to go teach). I had a great time. Mostly. It was great when I wasn't doing backbends. ;-)

I've discovered something: when I back off of a pose and just accept where I'm at with it, even if it's a strange modification, I often stumble into the full pose later on. That's what happened with Garba Pindasana a few days ago and it's what happened with Baddha Padmasana today.

In place of Baddha Padmasana, I've been coming into Siddhasana and just doing an ordinary sort of forward-bendy thing, bringing my arms to the floor. Today, I thought “What the heck - I haven't tried to bind in awhile. Let's see what happens!”

What happened was that I was able to bind! This pose is on my list of 'Ya Gotta Be Kidding Me' poses (along with Janu Sirsasana C and others), so I'm was rightly gobsmacked by this event.

Of course, my right foot immediately cramped up. I persevered and came into the forward bend anyway. Voilà,!

Oh yeah, and about Janu Sirsasana C? I can now do that crazy dorsiflexion thing with my right foot, but not with my left. This was yet another accidental discovery as I revisited that posture this week.

I didn't know that I was supposed to be pointing my toes in Halasana. So this week, I started doing the pose with my toes pointed. Ow, my feet! The tops of my feet get such a stretch just with that small change! And to my great surprise, my knees now rest on the floor in Karna Pidasana.

“Practice and all is coming” Um, yeah!

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Oh my goodness! I can't believe all the things you can do. When I click on the links my mouth drops open in awe.

Kaivalya said...

lol :-) Keep in mind that what you see in the links and what I can actually 'do' are sometimes two very different things.

For example, in Garba Pindasana, I can't put my hands on my face/head yet. I can only bring the foot into dorsiflexion and do the forward bend on one side in Janu Sirsasana C.

Also, these little milestones come and go. Once day, my knees will be on the floor in Karna Pidasana, and the next, they won't. It ebbs and flows.

But it's a lot of fun. Often, my best practices aren't the ones when I'm coming deep into postures, but when I'm deep in the flow and maintaining one-pointed focus.