Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Day 77

All hands and feet

My hips are back from their holiday, right in time for my Ladies Holiday. I wonder if the stiffness and my cycle are somehow connected? Today, I felt bendy.

It's wonderful how daily practice brings me back in touch not only with the cycles of nature, but my own internal rhythms. As I did the sun salutations, I was keenly aware of the ebb and flow of my body. I hesitated before doing Supta Konasana and ended up skipping it entirely and skipped the inversions in the closing sequence. Sure enough, after practice I discovered that the 'flow' had brought on my flow.

Over the past few days, I've noticed myself becoming more patient with the practice and losing some of that 'are-we-there-yet' anxiety that I've been carrying since early in the month. I seem to have distilled the Primary Series into discrete chunks. I'm sure this is different for everyone, but for me, it goes like this: The Sun Salutations. The standing poses. Seated poses up to Marichyasana D. The difficult (to me) poses up to Baddha Konasana (which is not difficult to me). The fun poses up to Setu Bandasana (but I still can't do Setu Bandasana). The little interval before closing when I do backbends and my beloved handstands (the part of Anusara that I can't bring myself to leave out of my daily practice). Closing sequence (Ahhhh!).

I find that more and more, I'm focusing on the whichever little 'chunk' of the series I'm currently in the midst of and not thinking to myself “Oh no, you mean I'm only at Marichyasana B? I'm gonna die!!!!” (are we there yet?). It's a long practice (takes me over an hour and a half most mornings). Anything I can do to make it more digestible seems like a good strategy.

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