Jivamukti

Last night was loads of fun. 5 pubs in 6 hours, dancing, and lots of walking around the city giving candy to strangers and being flamboyantly fabulous. The evening concluded in a spectacularly Canadian fashion, with some late nite poutine at a little hole-in-the-wall place. It was pretty good too, though a bit salty for my taste.


For those keeping score: I had one caesar early in the evening, then cut myself off for all the walking around. I drank a Seagram’s Ice at Pub #4 and that just did me in. I was a giggling mess after that and, predictably, hung over this morning. I did a terrific job of sleeping past 6 a.m., though. I was still sound asleep at 9:30 when the evil landlords decided to do a spontaneous fire alarm check. Seriously?! On a Sunday morning?! I couldn’t get back to sleep after that, so I got up.

As for the hangover, it stalked me off and on all day, but apparently Espom salt and EmergenC are as effective for alcoholic hangovers as they are for Astanga hangovers. Good to know!

It was such a beautiful day! I spent a few hours in the park, getting some vitamin D. With the weather this nice, there’s no reason not to ride my bike. I rode to my class in the west end and this literally cut my commute time by three quarters!

I delayed my practice until the evening, hoping I would be feeling a bit better by then, but I got a terrible headache through much of it. The Jivamukti DVD was such a nice warmup for my backbending practice yesterday, I decided to use it again today. This time I chose Sharon Gannon’s voice to lead me through. She’s much more woo-woo than David and found some of the dialogue a bit over-the-top, but it’s was still an effective practice.

After 35 minutes, I paused the DVD and did my own backbending practice: three more backbends, working the hands closer to the feet. Then I moved to the wall. Today, I tried rocking with my breath and walked my hands further up the wall with every inhalation, then tried to ‘come up’ from the wall with the inhalation. I sometimes’ twist’ as I’m coming up. I need to stop that, use the strength of my legs and come up evenly.

My quads were sore this morning and I was really feeling them this afternoon. This is a good sign! Clearly, the wall work is effective for building the strength I need for backbending. I just need to figure out a way to incorporate this work into my daily routine. It won’t happen at the Shala. Using the wall is frowned upon there. I guess I’ll need to do it at home afterward.