Climbing the Walls

Practiced this morning with The Cop. He has today off, so I took the day off, too. Otherwise our schedules keep us apart too much. So we slept in, had coffee, then hit the mats.

The Cop is doing really well with Ashtanga. He follows along by watching and by listening to my breath, and he doesn't whine ;-) We zipped right through half primary, then he came along for the ride from bhujapidasana to baddha konasana. Woohoo!

Interestingly, he gets claustrophobic in kurmasana. I know Volleyball Guy always reminds us to keep our eyes open in kurmasana, and talks about how it can be claustrophobic. I've never felt that, but apparently both Volleyball Guy and The Cop do.

The great thing about having a practice partner (aside from just the pleasure of company during practice) is the help you can get in backbends. We both helped each other with a strap under the upper back during urdhva dhanurasana. And then I asked The Cop to help me understand dropping back against the wall.

At led class on Saturday, The British Director and I talked about dropping back against the wall. I was a little leery, because the rooms in the Starbucks of Yoga studio are round, so the walls are curved and it is very hard to understand your body's relationship to the room. Plus the walls are painted white, and the lighting is low. It all added up to an environment that was too hard for me to understand, visually and kinesthetically. Plus the happy chaos of the dropback section of class was occurring, so I didn't want to tie up The British Director for too long.

This morning, though, I explained what I wanted to do and asked The Cop to spot me until I could understand what I was doing. He's a great spotter--due to years at the gym, no doubt. When you spot someone lifting weights, you only offer just enough assistance that the person can manage the lift on their own. Essentially, you make sure they're safe and then keep backing off with your assistance as much as possible while still allowing them to be successful.

Now I know where to put my toes so that I'll be far enough away from the wall to drop back, but not too far away. I definitely was concerned about trying to drop back and being too far away and just missing the wall entirely. LOL! It's a pretty hilarious scene to imagine, but not really fun to enact, I'm sure.