Astanga

Shala practice was good this morning. After two days away, I was delighted to be back.

With my slowly healing hamstring, my practice has fallen into a steady, mostly unchanging routine. There have been no huge shifts in either direction. Every so often, the wrist bind on the first side of Marichyasana D will give me problems. Though I can take Supta Kurmasana fairly easily, deepening it further is out of the question until my hamstring heals.

I don’t get squishes anymore and few adjustments.

I’ve been working on my exit from Supta K though, and it’s getting better! I swung my legs back into Bakasana easily today. It was not a very pretty Bakasana or stable, so I set up a stronger Bakasana for the jumpback.

I’ve also taken the ‘Mayurasana cheat’ out of my Lotus jumpback and I’m trying to lift my hips up and jump back using the strength of my arms and Bandhas (I’ve had mixed success - my regular vinyasa jumps have not been spectacular lately).

The Prasaritas have been getting easier! In Prasarita Padottanasana C, I’ve been focusing on deeping the arms (since working the forward bend wasn’t an option for so long). Today, my head was on the floor! And I think my hands came pretty close to the floor too! I remember when I used to get the adjustment for this pose, I could feel air cool as my hands approached the floor. I was feeling it today! Maybe I’ll ask P how close I am during tomorrow’s practice.

In the Shala, I’m still doing six backbends (three in a row, rest, three in a row). It’s the same old routine: come up, walk the hands in, try to push the weight into my feet and bring the hips forward, straighten the legs, walk in some more...all the while, gazing at my nose and breathing deeply.

In the park today, I took another Big Leap of Faith with my dropbacks: I removed the training wheels! No more slope! Instead of doing ‘warm-up’ dropbacks on the hill I walked to the middle of the field and did three dropbacks on a flat surface. Success!

Then I went back to the hill to work on standing up. When I drop to a slope, I can rock forward and lift my hands off the ground, so I did a bit of that. Then I tried to stand up. I fell on my back: WOMPF! I’m not even close!

From the work I’ve done dropping against a wall and coming back up, I know that there’s a threshold I need to cross. There's a point where the downward pull of gravity lets go and the body floats forward/up. I’m not finding it right now. I’ll keep trying.

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Audrey is feeling a bit uncertain...did she forget to put on deodorant today?

(apparently, the best way to check for this is to pretend that you’re speed skating!)

Checking-for-deodorant-asana. Does anyone know the Sanskrit for that one?