Standing on my own two feet.

I think I’ve managed to get my new session in manageable shape. Samasthiti (equal standing posture) is the principle posture for this session and I’m making a real effort to focus on feet and grounding.

My error from last session was not treating Samasthiti as a “real” posture, complete with need to warm up and prep the body. This time I started with Samasthiti but didn’t hold it very long (6 breaths) and went into a sequence of standing postures to limber up the back, hips and hamstrings.

Then I took Samasthiti as the principle posture, holding it for an extended period of time. I didn’t count the breaths, just paid attention to the various parts of my body and how they interacted in this posture.

A few counter postures concluded the session and I used one last go at Samasthiti as the last posture. If I hadn’t been heading out to work, it would have been a perfect transition into a walking meditation.

I’m going to leave this session as it stands right now. I think I’ll revisit it this session and layer some chanting over it. I’d also like to experiment with some chant and/or mantra work. The next session I’d like to work on will be centred on the seated twist.

I’m really enjoying this session. I need the feeling of grounding and returning to a sense of center after this spring. I really feel a sense of things settling around me. I’ve started working on my course for the fall. I’m feeling really confident about how things are working out.

More importantly, for me, I enjoyed constructing the session. As I was undergoing my teacher’s training, I really struggled with session construction, and frequently fell short of where I wanted to go. These days, I’m working on my own schedule and it’s a much more enjoyable process.

Thanks for reading,

Namaste,

Kate

Mental note to self…

Do not play on the mat when you’re scheduled to work a night shift.

Yesterday’s little foray on the mat, which was largely free form and without any thought into design behind it turned out to be a bad idea. It’s not that I haven’t done stuff like this before, I’ve just always been free to sleep off the negative effects of an off-balanced session.

Yesterday, and I had hints of it on the mat as I was finishing up, introduced a lot of tension into my shoulders and there wasn’t any significant release of that area to counter it. Consequently, by 3 am, my neck was like steel and just holding my head up hurt like all get out. I spent about half the shift with a heated compress bag over my neck and shoulders in an attempt to get them to loosen up.

Today, I think I’ll sit down with pencil and paper and see if I can’t tweak yesterday’s mat experiment and circumvent the neck and shoulders bit. I think that it has potential to be a good session given enough play room.

Besides, I need as much practice as I can get with session construction. It was my weakest point during my teacher’s training and the one I feel the least confident about. So it’s time to start practicing those skills while letting go of my expectations that I’m going to be some kind of session construction wizard my first forays out. The problem with studying from massive quantities of Claude Maréchal’s practices is you get an idea of just how elegant a good session can be and just how awkward mine are in comparison. I’m going to assume his first practices weren’t quite the same caliber.

In any event, it’s time to get back to work. Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate