Diary of a yoga nobodhi

Tuesday 27th December 2005

I like those few minutes during the pre-practice stretches when you’re feeling out how your body and mind are today. What will practice show up today? You try and predict the flavour of the next 2 hours on the mat, based on past experience. You put your bets on what today’s performance will be like.
Even after 2 years of regular Ashtanga, I’m right as often as I’m wrong.
There are days when I’m not so open and flexible in the body, but my mind is onto every sensation of stretch, struggle, opening, flicker, twitch. Mind, body and breath meld into one unstoppable force.
There are days when physical energy gets me through practice but my mind is somewhere else, scattered, preoccupied.
And there are days of no energy and no focus, when I deduce that a sleep-in would have probably been more beneficial than a practice.
Happily today’s practice was one where everything blended together like a delicious chocolate milkshake.

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Monday 26th December 2005

Did an Iyengar practise for a change tonight. It was one straight out of the Light On Yoga appendix – week 22-25 from the courses at the back.
You start with Headstand then variations, then follow with Shoulderstand and variations. The only pose in the entire sequence I couldn’t do was Ardha Matsyendrasana because I rarely do this version where you have to sit up on your heel. The rare times I’ve done this pose, I do the variation where both buttocks are on the ground between the feet (which is much more stable). I just couldn’t keep my balance up on the heel while wrapping the arm around the leg and I fell out of it so may times while trying that I gave up.
Apart from that the practice had a nice fullness to it, not too difficult (but you don’t get karma points for doing a difficult practice anyway).
I spent 10 long breaths (one and a half minutes) in all the poses but soaked in the initial Headstand and Shoulderstand for 30 breaths each (work that out) before moving into their variations. All up the entire Headstand sequence lasted 7 minutes. And by that time I was soooo ready to come down which means 7 minutes is my current max for holding Headstand. I’d like to build up my staying power in these beautiful poses and dive really deep into inversion territory.
Headstand and Shoulderstand. The king and queen of asanas.
The Ashtanga short stay in these poses (20 breaths) is like touching down in a foreign country and sightseeing for a day or two. You can’t get to know them on such a short visit, you have to live there a little while, seek out the alleys, the locals, the places not on the tour guide, get a real feeling for the culture.
These poses are legendary for their physiological benefits.

An unexpected moment came in Marichyasana C. Up until now, the buttock of my bent leg has always been off the floor but tonight my body recalled an adjustment that David gave me recently. He somehow leaned my weight fully back onto his leg so I would have fallen backwards without his support, and he rotated and pressed my raised buttock heavily onto the floor. Tonight I got it down easily without falling back and it really felt so much different in the hip joint, cleaner.
Tomorrow morning will be full primary practice in the Gallery – the first one for 5 days but if feels like weeks. With so little to occupy me while on a solitary personal retreat these holidays, the time has been going enchantingly slowly. These are very laid back, easy days. And there’s another 7 of them to go before I return to work. I’m cherishing every moment.

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Tuesday 22nd November 2005

Urdhva Padmasana
After all these years of being a lithe, agile little slip of a girl, I’m having to get used to inhabiting an aging body that’s occasionally stiff from head to toe and stubbornly unyielding in its most troubled spots.
But it is interesting to work with this changing body. Practice this morning magnified all my past injuries and traumas. My right knee has become a test of my patience in all the Padmasana poses, taking at least 2 minutes to soften and open enough to get into the poses, and curiously, not just the first pose (Ardha Baddha Padmottanasana) but all of them. I’d like to think that after working incrementally into a deep Ardha Baddha Padmottanasana (which can take a good 20 breaths or so to get there), the knee and hip joints would be buttered up enough to just slide into the subsequent Padmasana poses.
Not so.
When I get to the next Padmasana pose - Ardha Baddha Padma Paschimottanasana – it’s back to stiff old square one and I have to go through the entire softening process again. At the start of this pose, I’m stuck in an almost frozen, upright, seated position with a locked knee and stiff hip, unable to bend forward at all. My breath is short, signalling injury alert. Then the journey beings, the long, slow descent down into the depths of the full forward bend. And I get there, eventually. No ego, no pushing, no agenda, just holding the pose at each edge, waiting for that edge to move another millimetre, and when it does, it’s like a door opening. I go through. To the next closed door. So I knock and I wait. I listen for the cue, patiently. Finally it happens - the next door opens and I go through. And this is how it continues on. This is the process. Twenty breaths, twenty doors. I’ve been doing it like this for quite a while, prying open the knee and hip joint in every practice.
I wonder why my knee isn’t unstiffening when it gets all this understanding and attention.

Today I got a scare. It was the first day in my Ashtanga history that I ALMOST couldn’t get into Urdhva Padmasana. Not a promising sign of things to come.
This pose isn’t like seated Padmasana where you can happily pull in the right leg and sit in half Padmasana for a while until the joints soften before folding the other leg on top.
In seated Padmasana, you’ve got all the time in the world. But in Urdhva Padmasana, you’re balancing upside down in the shoulderstand position precariously trying to work the right knee and hip open enough to draw the right foot in deep towards the left hip. It resembles a circus balancing act. The left leg is half bent and suspended somewhere up in mid air, waiting for its moment to strike while the right leg is fussing around. I resist the temptation to pull the second leg in too early, but if I wait too long I won’t be able to. Time is running out – balancing in shoulderstand supported by only one hand is tiring. The urgency begins to creep in. If I don’t’ get into the full pose in another 5 seconds, I’ll have no choice but to come down. Failure – that would signal the loss of my favourite pose.
So here it gets real interesting. I’m on the precipice, time is ticking away, I’m inverted, balancing, tiring, waiting for the right knee joint to melt open so the left leg can fold on top of it safely. I could easily tear my knee ligaments here if I moved into the full pose too quick...
Some people get their excitement from mountain climbing, abseiling, flirting with death. This knee drama unfolds with the same excitement. It’s quite hilarious.

Urdhva Padmasana has become the arena where I practice awareness, sensitivity, patience, acceptance, equanimity, compassion and loving kindness, where I come up against an obstacle, then watch it melt away, where I’m reminded that what is going on in my conscious and subconscious mind is revealed in my body, moment to moment.
This right knee perplexes me. It’s been mysteriously deteriorating over the last year or so…is it simply age, arthritis, or something in my mind that’s manifesting in poor alignment, bad sitting habits perhaps. New age believers might diagnose it as an emotional block that’s crystallised hard in the knee, though most wouldn't offer a reasonable explanation or a cure for this.

Could be all, could be none. Really doesn’t matter in the big picture, except as another opportunity for me to love and accept all the changing circumstances this wonderfully rich life brings.
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