Astanga

I’m so tired right now, my bones are actually aching. My day started at the Shala with my practice, continued with a long walk and some work on my ‘secret project’, then I taught a couple of classes. Afterward, I biked to the store to shop for provisions and I spent the next 5 hours baking.

I love baking. But I don’t have air conditioning and my apartment is approximately the size of a shoebox. My kitchen basically *is* my apartment and right now, it’s about a kazillion degrees in here. The oven has been running all day! By mid-afternoon, it was so hot, I half-expected Bikram Chodhury to step out of the oven, wink at me, and steal a muffin! The temperature *outside* was 43C with the humidex (that’s about 110F). I’m sure it was far hotter than that in my kitchen.

But I whipped up the following:

-2 batches of vegan muffins

-1 batch of vegan double chocolate brownies

-1 batch of gluten-free vegan double chocolate brownies

-1 batch of blueberry crumble squares

And tonight I put together a vegan stew, which will bubble away in the crock pot into the wee hours.

My fun and very social weekend starts tomorrow evening with Shala North’s vegan potluck.

Just consider the last two words of that sentence and you’ll understand why I’m *so* excited: VEGAN! POTLUCK! An entire table full of food that I can actually EAT! Without worrying about the ingredients! (okay, let’s just ignore my gluten and bean semi-allergy for a moment)

Heaven!!!

And that’s not all! Once I’ve filled my plate, I get to sit around and chat about Astanga yoga with a bunch of cool and interesting people. I’m embarrassed to admit how incredibly excited I’ve been about this. I’ve been anticipating it for weeks!

Then on Saturday, Shala South is celebrating their anniversary with a yoga class, dinner and musical performance by my chanting/philosophy teacher’s kirtan band. Since Sunday is a Moon Day, I can enjoy it all guilt free - no worries about ‘turning into a pumpkin’ at 9 p.m.

I might just need a weekend to recover from my weekend! ;-)

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Practice report:

When I arrived at the Shala, it was COLD because the air conditioning had been running all night. A few cracked windows solved that problem, though. It was hot out, even at 6:30 a.m.!

Good news: I didn’t get attacked by any flies today.

More good news: Backbending was pretty good!

This is the first day in about a week I haven’t been suffering from ‘secret project’ induced leg aches. My legs felt fine, so I was stronger. P watched me do the first two backbends, then pulled my hips forward for the last one.

Something shifted in my brain during this adjustment and I suddenly got it! I understood it better (it’s never made any sense to me before). I pushed down into my heels, lifted my hips up and forward against his hands. All of the experimentation I’ve been doing with shifting the weight around in my feet led me to this point. It was kind of an ‘a ha!’ moment. P gave me positive feedback.

I worked really hard in the last three backbends. I walked my hands in (Pingu arms!) each time I pressed up - P kept encouraging me. The third backbend, I walked them in A LOT and P said: ‘Good!!! You’re walking them in far!’ It felt like it! I kept breathing, maintained my Driste, came down after 5 breaths. My legs were shaky and tired, but I felt okay.

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I had another breakthrough moment with my ‘secret project’ today.

This one took me entirely by surprise and I think it was an important step forward for what I’m trying to accomplish. Not that I was very successful or anything. ;-) I was so gobsmacked that I fell over, then ended up flat on my back, laughing at myself. Then I tried again! No dice. I guess it was a fluke, but a good one!

It’s hard to be fearful or angsty when there’s a blue sky stretching overhead and the entire world is green and sparkling. Even if nothing substantial comes of this, I have these memories of soft grass under my feet and a sense of transcending my own perceived limitations. Yoga is awesome that way!