Astanga

Today was a better practice. I’m not sure why yesterday was such a trial, but it may have been something as simple as taking my Sunday salt bath in the afternoon instead of the evening. I took last night’s bath right before bed and I wasn’t as sore or tired in the morning. The shoulder felt fine and there were only a few twinges as I practised, so I guess it was just sore from that workshop on Sunday.

This week’s focus for practice is still on jumpbacks, but breaking it down a little bit. After I lift the feet through, I want to better co-ordinate the actions of Chaturanga (bend the arms, chest lowers and moves forward) with shooting the legs back. It’s much smoother when these things happen simultaneously, but I tend to take my legs back first, *then* Chaturanga. I don’t know when I’ll lose the toes-on-the-floor cheat, but I’m not going to worry about it for now. I want to be able to move through the jumpback smoothly, breathing when I supposed to.

The heat wasn’t as bad today. I was still sweating buckets, but I didn’t feel overwhelmed by it. I only had one I-can’t-take-this-anymore moment and I just breathed through it and moved on. Shut up, brain! I’m busy here...

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I glanced over my April goals and had a good chuckle. Aside from regular attendance at the Shala and Kino’s workshops, I didn’t do much. I’ve sort of dropped Devangarai because at the moment, I have NO concentration to speak of. Ditto for meditation. I’m not even reading very much. About a week into the month, my Mobile Meditator sprung a leak and I dropped meditation (my MM was from the first batch, improvements have been made and Scott sent out a replacement right away) . I picked up my guitar a few times, but I guess I need to learn some good break-up songs because the love songs were making me sad.

My schedule is crazy busy in May, so I’m keeping my goals pretty modest:
-Regular attendance at the Shala
-Get back to daily meditation
-Finish the Satchidananda Yoga Sutras so I can start the Bryant translation
-Abdominal and leg work at the gym 3x per week
-Play my guitar for a little while in the evenings
-Spend less time on Facebook (yeah, got sucked into that vortex again!)

In June, things will start to slow down considerably as my community classes drop off (they don’t run in the summer months).

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I scanned a whole new set of 70s Yoga today. Expect to be entertained and enlightened over the coming weeks!

Today, the Junior Leaguers hit the persian rugs to demonstrate ‘Cat Hump’.

We can only assume that the cat (poor cat!) is underneath. My naiveté about what those ladies were up to on their manicured lawns has been forever shattered!