Astanga

Today was my last completely unscheduled day before the whirlwind of my fall schedule hits. Now, you might think I would spend this day productively, getting ready for the coming week...

Ha, ah! Fat chance!!!

I’ve done diddly-squat! I slept in (11 hours of sleep - I think I’m officially ‘caught up’ from my night of insomnia). I practised. I went for a walk and ate lunch. My body wants to take a nap right now, but reality is now sinking in. I have work to do and an early bedtime ahead of me.

Oh, that 5 a.m. alarm tomorrow is gonna HURT.

I had an unexpectedly good practice this morning. After a three-day break from the Intermediate Series, I was worried about those backbends. They were actually pretty good! I was tired, but rolled through them. Primary was excellent. All of my usual wrist-binds were present and accounted for. Supta K was solid.

An issue has come up in Dhanurasana. I’m currently doing the pose with my legs and heels together. That’s going pretty well, actually, given how *impossible* that felt when I first tried it. Parsva Dhanurasana is still a ‘weird’ pose for me, but I’m doing it and it feels okay.

However, as I was coming back up from the second side of Parsva D today, I felt a sudden sharp pain on the outside of my left knee. It was intense enough that I came out of the pose to check things out. The knee felt fine, so I continued and did the five breath hold in Dhanurasana to complete the sequence, but I did it with my knees and heels hip distance apart because it hurt my knee to keep them together.

I know what you’re probably thinking and I agree: If a specific alignment hurts, I should modify. Got it. But does anyone out there know what could be causing this weird knee tweak? Is it something I’m doing in correctly? This is the one pose I didn’t receive a huge amount of guidance on the last time I saw D&J. I’m feeling a bit lost.

I’m raising the bar in Laghu Vajrasana. Today, I removed the block. I tried to come as close to the floor as I could, hold for five breaths and come up. I repeated the pose three times successfully using this method. My head is *very* close to the floor now, less than 10 centimetres.

Backbending: Urdhva Dhanurasana felt fine and my dropbacks were smooth and light. I’m still modifying the distance between my feet (wider than the regulation ‘hip distance’) for the dropbacks and my toes are always turned outward by the time my hands hit the floor. I feel like I’m stuck in a bit of a rut here. If I try to bring my feet closer together, I *really* turn the toes out and almost roll onto the side of my feet as I drop back (but, amusingly, my heels stay on the floor).

Standing up: I did three dropbacks-to-standups from the futon, but standing was a bit dodgy today. Not as dodgy as last week, though.

It’s all just a process, I guess - a two-steps-forward-one-step-back sort of thing.

My three-minute Sirsasana felt easy-peasy today. It may be time to bump that up to four minutes.

I’m still meditating in the mornings too. I’ve bumped that up to 10 minutes, but I think I’m going maintain that until I adjust to my new, busier schedule.