11 August self practice

Practice was nice today, though I did venture off the usual series and did some experimentation. One thing I've observed lately is that I no longer need to do warm up stretches before hand to get comfortable in practice. Last time, because of my stiff hips, I've always had to do some hips opening like sukhasana or sit in pigeon. Now I can start surya namaskaras and that warms me up enough. Perhaps with more backbends added to my practice, I may have to work on shoulders and quads in the future before starting, but at the moment, I'm happy to report I can stop the futzing around and just start.

I got into eka pada sirshasana on the right, and could sit with my hands in namaste in front of me..without holding! Bending forward, I still had to hold on tight though. The left side was not so great though..I still had to hold on to prevent the leg from coming off both sitting and bending forward. I also did dwi pada viparita dandasana today.

I also went and did my few second series poses..cos I reckon I need to do bhekasana to help with my ever stiffening hip flexors and quads. I've never managed to get my feet to the floor in bhekasana. I don't know if I can go forward without getting the feet to the floor. D sat on my knees the other day in mysore class and pulled my shoulders back to open the chest. I reckon that did something to my SI joint. But I feel fine today though..no serious problem.

Also I don't know how come I could get into a pretty decent dwi pada viparita dandasana today. Usually my shoulders are a little too tight to achieve much height in the backbend, but today was nice and open..and I swear I looked like that woman in YJ..(yup..i bought myself a huge mirror and put it into my room to view myself..vain and narcissistic..) I was pretty impressed with myself!

Anyhow, jumpbacks are still more or less where it was all along..which means they are still sucky. Anyhow, I'm doing them as best I can...hopefully it starts to get better soon..