Beware: Practice notes only

Serious self practice mode lately. Not quite sure why. It struck me one morning as I was leaving the shala that there are a few things I am working on in practice, and that the only way to proceed was simply to keep practicing: no muss, no fuss. And it's stuff I can do at home, day after day, simply by walking into the yoga room. For some reason it seemed really important that I subtract any extraneous details, that it simply be me and my practice. Based on the notion that if I just bust out bunches of practices, I'll get further into the poses.

Basically, I have work to do on supta kurmasana, garbha pindasana and baddha konasana. And the only way to proceed, or actually, the easiest way to proceed, is to not make too much of the whole deal but just to get up every morning and practice. I have the poses figured out, and the only thing that will open them up more is persistance.

As is usual, I have identified the things I want to focus on. Also what I can skip (handstands, bakasana transition out of utkatasana, eka pada bakasana transition out of virabhadrasana). I just want a plain old minimalist primary practice.

Baddha k is all about getting my head to the floor. As I've mentioned before, I am not one of those people who find baddha k relatively easy or "natural." That said, I seem to be through the terrifying crack-of-the-sacrum phase: at this point, it's just a little pop. And I'm down to one sandbag on my back to get my head to the floor--for a while there, it required two sandbags and a push. There's still plenty of stuff going on in the adductors, stuff I can't even fathom, but it's just a matter of time before they release.

Garbha p is pretty rewarding, and I'm starting to understand how the pose fits into the sequence, how the sensation of the rolling can be soothing and energizing at the same time. At the shala, folks usually just wrap their arms around their legs and roll when they get to garbha pindasana, so I felt like a dork when I decided to carry around my bottle of water, pull up the legs of my pants and douse my limbs with water in order to get my arms all the way through my legs. I was only able to put my hands in front of my face and touch my fingertips to my forehead for the first few weeks, though for the past couple of practices, my palms are almost cupping my face. Again, just a matter of time.

Supta kurmasana. What can I say? The hand bind gets stronger and stronger, enough of a grip at this point that I can really roll side to side pretty vigorously in an attempt to get my feet together, and, on good days, slightly crossed. Getting there...

The other "at home" project is jumpbacks. I'm usually pretty good for some relatively good jumpthroughs, though once I get tired, they tend to devolve into "jumpslides"-- half slides that can almost resemble jumpthroughs, courtesy of my slippery rug. Aw, but I know it's a fake.

Anyhow, I suddenly realized the flaw in my logic that suggested it would be easier to learn jumpthroughs first, jumpbacks later. As it turns out, though, I find myself worrying about the stress an uncontrolled jumpthrough is likely to exert on my shoulder, specifically the old rotator cuff tear. It's healed (happened years ago), but still there's a sense of it being the weakest link. Last week I had a brainstorm: learn jumpbacks. The resulting strength and control will actually make jumpthroughs safer. So jumpbacks it is. Or, more accurately, lolasanas followed by a butt-lift followed by my strength giving out and me ending up on my knees. Okay, well that's fine. If I do it a billion times, eventually my strength will increase and I'll pull this off.

So that's the story from here. At least the practice notes story. Inspired by Neti, who pointed out that practice notes are perfectly acceptable blog fodder.