A return to the mat

Today upon rising my wonky left shoulder wasn’t so wonky or painful and I took that as a sign that it was safe to return to my physical practice…gently of course.

I decided to pick up largely where I had left off with my Samisthiti practice, the one in which the principle posture is standing. I’m starting to enjoy it very much. There’s a lot of things coalescing around me right now, including a realization I have some of the worst body awareness going. I’ve lived most of my life from the chin up and my body from the clavicles south is pretty much uncharted territory. One would think that after the amount of time I’ve spent in a yoga class of some type, I would have got it by now. Uhhhhhh, no, I haven’t. I’m just starting to figure out that I’m now starting to get it. What can I say? I’m on the slow learning curve.

So for me, the last few days have been an extremely interesting and minorly uncomfortable experience. I suddenly notice my normal little misalignments of body structure, how my body habitually twists and what has probably always felt uncomfortable but has remained unnoticed for me. It sounds a bit silly but I’m a person who has lived inside my mind all of my life, certainly all of my adult life. Now, I just seem to be appreciating that I have a body as well.

The previous experiments in Parivrtta Trikonasana are paying dividends. The lesson from Yoga Journal on grounding through the legs and not allowing my hips to swivel is really adding a punch to the posture. Now the twist is working through my thoracic spine whereas before I was allowing the lower side hip to drop and shortcut the process.

On other notes, last night’s gathering with my fellow new teachers and our teacher was hugely rewarding. One, I’ve come to love these women and keeping track of what’s new in their lives is important to me. Secondly, my teacher is fresh back from her time with her teacher and she’s packing new ideas on how to continue our training. Next class is in September and I’m looking forward to it. As grateful as I am to be returning to my own practice, I will be glad to resume the structure of class, etc, particularly starting to delve more deeply into the Sutras.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Some points on a triangle

Wow. Today’s exercise in exploring the basics of Parivrtta Trikonasana — the revolved triangle — was an eyeopener. I was using the article in this month’s Yoga Journal to guide me through the process. I warmed up with a few breaths of Samasthiti, some forward bends with arm movement to open the upper back and Parshva Uttanasana — the one sided stretch with arms movements to keep working the upper back.

The Yoga Journal article had a couple of variations and I decided to stick with the first. It’s a highly modified Parivrtta Trikonasana but boy, is it instructive!!! It’s taken with parallel feet, spread wide on the long axis of the mat. Exhale torso until it’s level with the floor and place the hand on a block that’s in line with body centre. This gives a starting place where the back is long and extended, sacrum flat. Keeping the legs (and hips) engaged pushed the twist as I lifted one arm up into the thoracic spine.

I very quickly became aware that I have developed a habitual shortcut with this posture. I’ve been dropping the hip on the side opposite to the upraised arm in order to facilitate the twist. Taking the posture this way made me very aware of how I’m using the rotational capacity of the lumbar spine and the swivel in the hips to keep the thoracic spine from letting go of its customary rigidity.

I will definitely be repeating this process as a way of teaching the muscles in the middle back to let go. The posture was held fairly long … 8 breaths on each side — consciously lengthening the spine on the inhalation phase and releasing into the twist (now located in my mid spine!!) on the exhale phase.

After both sides, I laid on my back, just letting the curves of the spine find the mat and floor. The entire thoracic section was alive and energized. It really felt terrific. I finished the session with a few repetitions of Bridge and Apanasana to release the spine.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Back to basics – Parivrtta Trikonasana revisited.

Every time I start thinking about letting my subscription to Yoga Journal lapse, usually in favour of another subscription, they come out with a humdinger of an issue. The August 2008 qualifies for a humdinger award because they’re right where I’m at on the mat…yeah yeah, I hear you about all the damn commercial advertisements for enlightenment in a bottle, the ads, and the lack of non-model people in it but bear with me…

The Basics column this month is an invitation to delve into Parivrtta Trikonasana — the revolved triangle pose. I’m sure that this month’s quest to explore the realms of “root chakra”, muladhara, is what’s behind this whole push to get back to basics, explore the principle postures that have rather been forgotten in my quest to make some approximation (forget master) some of the more glorious asanas.  I think because the revolved triangle, like Samasthiti (equal standing) and Savasana  (Corpse)  come so early in our yoga education, there’s a temptation to forget about them as we get more comfortable with the asana work. Or maybe this is just one of the things I end up dealing with in my goal oriented mind.

I know over the past year, these basic postures have been relegated to the category of “means to an end”. They’ve been preparatory postures, used to get my body ready to do something else, usually something with more “glamour” and “pizazz” attached to it. Somewhere along the line, the two triangles got reduced to “hip warmer, back warmer, lateral stretch”. I can’t remember the last time I used them as a principle posture, to be in them for themselves instead of being in them for something else.

So today, I’m taking to the mat with the intention of exploring Parivrtta Trikonasana as a posture in and of it’s own right… and I won’t be making the same mistake as I did the first time I lit out with Samasthiti. I’m going to sit down with pen and paper first and work out a warmup and counterposture sequence to go with it!!

Have a good day, thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Arrrrrrrgh…

For the record, I hate working dayshifts. And just to add to the joy of it all, I switched shifts with someone so I’m working 4 of them in a row. Egads, 4 days that start at 4:15 am …well theoretically start at 4:15. Today I was awake at 3 because…who knows?

I’m feeling a lot of tension in my neck and shoulder area this morning. It’s the sitting in a chair for 12 hours at a time that does it. The cycling doesn’t help as I have a tendency to “turtle” on the bike, pushing my shoulders towards my ears. Why? I have no earthly idea. This morning’s practice is going to be attending a little to that area of the body. I’m still working with the Samasthiti session I constructed a few days ago. There’s still something in need of tweaking there… I suspect the problem is with the end of it.

In any event, I’m off to the mat. There’s something in me right now that’s in desperate need of a few held breaths of Parivrtta trikonosana revolved triangle to bring my back and shoulders to normal.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate