Friday, January 22, 2010

Astanga

When I woke this morning, I knew my Lady’s Holiday was imminent (and I was right) so I hit the mat with a special gusto. In the spirit of my WoYoPracMo goal, I do plan to keep practising the full Primary Series over the next few days - sans inversions, of course. But I’ll be taking it easy.

Today’s practice was really fantastic and I can only blame the blocks. I’ve been SO lazy about my transitions between poses in Primary, particularly the seated vinyasas. Now that I’ve regained some of my strength, I realised that it’s time to 'raise the bar' a bit. There’s no way I’m going to be jumping back/jumping through right away, but I can give it my best effort and my best effort requires blocks.

I use them to get enough height to do the ’take it up’ portion of the vinyasa properly. This is a valuable strength-builder. For now, that’s all I’m adding. I’m continuing to do my sloppy, lazy, close-but-no-cigar jump-through for the time being. If I can master the jump-back, then I’ll shift my focus.

As it was, that extra notch of effort heated me right up! I was sweating buckets in the seated poses and it felt great. As soon as I came into Bhujapindasana, I knew I would be binding in Supta K. Marichyasana C is binding more comfortably these days too!

My only half-hearted pose was Savasana. The dog wandered over and asked for attention in the middle of my ’take rest’ and I couldn’t resist - we went for a long walk.

I had nothing on my agenda for the afternoon and felt like resting, so I settled into my window seat to work on a small project: to teach myself Audacity (an audio editing programme) and use it to edit some of my yoga audio files.

Currently I practice the Primary Series with either the audio of Beryl Bender Birch’s ‘Power Yoga’ DVD or Sharath Rangaswamy’s CD. Because I practice at home, I find that I work a lot harder if I’m held accountable by a teacher, even if that teacher is only ‘digital.’

In both recordings, there are poses and entire sections that I tend to skip each time. This requires me to get up and ‘fast forward’ through those parts. I wanted to eliminate these sections in order to streamline my practice and keep it as compact and efficient as possible.

I experienced a few hiccups with Audacity, but overall, I found it very intuitive and easy to figure out. The Sharath recording is now 65 minutes (70 minutes with my 5 minute Savasana and even shorter if I opt to do the closing sequence on my own). Beryl comes in at just under 78 minutes.

I can’t wait to use these!

The 'Princess Fur Friday' Photo:
Lately, Princess Fur has been spending quality time in her bean bag chair. This is actually MY bean bag chair, but she co-opted it as soon as she realised that it wouldn’t attack her or swallow her up in its depths. When she gets really settled into it, you can barely spot a dog unless she pokes her little nose up:

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Recently started incorporating the lift ups and jump throughs in the seated portion of my practice, and it really does keep me focused, and sweaty.
Cute dog, by the way :)