Supta Vajrasana

My new pose today. I'm beginning to think that D is giving me too many..its kinda hard to practice on my own already..and now I have a bit too much on the plate in second series...

My practice has been sucking big time lately. I had a nice time at conference last week..got to go to Dharma Mittra's class, Lance Schuler, John Scott (!!!) and a couple of other teachers. I learnt quite a bit from John..went to all his classes..the dynamics of flight, the machine body, cultivating the practice etc etc. Am thinking of doing his 30 hour intensive next year in late March.

The things that I got from John Scott's class that I think could help are:

1. When jumping from downdog to either sitting or uttanasana, first look between the hands, look to between the feet, and then up to navel. Keeping the rounding of the back, then prepare to jump forward. It works really well at keeping the bandhas in place and makes my jumps very light and floaty.

2. When moving the legs into lotus, first lift the leg and externally rotate without the arms. After that use the hands to receive the feet. This makes lotus far easier to do because the muscles used to move the feet into position would be tired out with the lifting effort and hence will be able to relax better into the lotus position.

3. Keep slight bend in knees when moving into poses like triangle, reverse triangle and parsvotanasana.

Overall, I just loved practising with John..its awesome to be in the presence of such an experienced teacher.

I also had fun in Dharma Mittra's class, although the one I went to was actually a Q & A kinda class. We got to pick his brains on all sorts of issues..from how to improve the practice, how to meditate, and things like are there demons and evil in this world.

As for mysore class today, it was quite a disaster practice wise. Am absolutely surprised whenever D decides to give me a new pose recently..My personal practice has been choppy at best, I still haven't been able to shake off the recent personal stuff thats been happening. Its no wonder I felt as stiff as a board today and weak as well!

Couldn't get my heels in kapotasana, no bind in supta K, even my mari D bind on the right kept slipping! Jumping back from bakasana was NOT happening. You could kinda say it all went pretty south...

Nevertheless, I wasn't expecting that much from myself..so I was just glad I made it there and practiced..hopefully I get back in the groove soon..

Haven't been blogging...

I think I've not been doing much blogging lately...

Just for the record, last week's mysore was ok, not great, no new pose after kapotasana, but all doable although a little stiff in the hammies..

I have been doing practice lately using David Swensen's DVD..can't really concentrate if I don't have someone telling me to do it at the moment..so David's at least keep me practising...lots of stuff going on in my life..as I mentioned a few posts ago. This time I think things have settled in...the new person in my life turned out to be "not" the new person in my life..don't you just hate it when you get all engrossed..thinking you might have found someone you are into..and they turn out not to be what you believe them to be?

Anyway the good thing is that I don't seem to have lost too much in terms of my asana practice. Kapotasana is pretty good..I can get the ankles on my own..drop back, get up etc. Recently I think my hip flexors have really gotten longer due to all the lunges that I do..so its taking a lot of stress off my lower back. Thats great to know.

Otherwise nothing really new to report except I kinda cracked my right hip doing eka pada shirshasana despite not being warmed up enough..so am paying for it with some slight pain in the hip..hope it goes away fast.