I'm not floating, I'm floundering

Today was an ordinary day in which many nice things happened to me.

I had a good practice, Primary Series, strong, solid and fun. My mother phoned. I rediscovered a resistance band that I won last year and promptly forgot about (am now happily looking up resistance band YouTubes for building upper body strength). A personal trainer friend showed me a neat exercise using a balance ball to mimick floating forward and I'm loving it.

As the day went on, the good kept coming...

I got a great haircut. I spent an hour in a downtown cafe eating a tea biscuit and surfing the web to my heart's content. A good chunk of unexpected money appeared in my account. Fresh cherries were on sale at the grocery store. I treated myself to Larry Schultz's "Rocket II" DVD (I hope it's good! Have any of you tried it?).

And, most profoundly nice, a senior yoga teacher who has been one of my teachers for nearly 10 years asked me to sub one of her Intermediate classes while she's away later this summer. I was so flattered and honoured, I almost lost my words for moment. It's deeply meaningful to me that she asked - and that she trusts me to cover her class (she also a fabulous teacher - those are very big shoes to fill!).

I'm still on my LH, so my practice is still modified. Today, I focused a lot of the vinyasas. I've amended my 'floaty vinyasa gameplan' again: I re-added the skinny blocks to my jumpthroughs. I can get by without them, but... I figured out that if I'm not fussing with those blocks, I can make a continuous flow out of the whole thing: jumpback, vinyasa, jumpthrough. It's rough-hewn, but it all starts to come together. I lack grace and I fall on my face a lot. I'm not floating, I'm floundering, but it's a start!

At the end of my practice, I added a prep pose for Pincha Mayurasana - Pincha arms with legs in downward dog. I was looking for a way to work on strength since I'm not doing the full inversion right now. DT stopped by and made a few very specific adjustments, explained what she was doing and I clarified by asking questions.

End result: Pincha ephiphany! I'm curious to see if this helps at all when I'm back to the full pose again.


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Whomp Moratorium

DT has put a moratorium on my Pincha *Whomps*. I knew it was coming after my disasterous attemps to come into that pose on my own yesterday (I didn't stick the balance even once). I'm at the point now where I need to either go up and stay up, or not go up at all (unless I'm doing a long hold against the wall). DT doesn't want falling to become a pattern and she's got a point: If falling out of Pincha was the full expression of the pose, I'd have that one in the bag!

Today, instead of trying to go up, I set up in the middle of my mat, walked my feet in and stayed on my tippy toes. I may add lifting one leg. I'm actually moderately competent at balancing with one leg up, the other leg in a pike, so I may try that too.

Alas, all of this planning is a moot point as of today because my dreaded LH is here. No inversions for a few days! :-( I'll be practising a low-key Primary or less for the rest of the week, though I might squeeze in some Intermediate on Friday.

On the bright side, this gives me a chance to work on my jumpbacks and jumpthroughs. Today, DT offered some additional instruction for the jumpback. The second or third time I tried it, I was able to find the 'lift' to jump back (it was probably just a milimetre of lift, but it felt huge to me!).

I'll have plenty of opportunities to explore this in the coming week, if I'm feeling up to it.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad