Yesterday morning, I decided to try filming myself doing primary series to Sharath's vinyasa count from his led primary CD. The day before (Friday), I had bought a digital camera, ostensibly in order to record whatever beautiful scenery I might encounter on my drive through all the states I will drive through (North Dakota, Montana) when I start my drive from here to Idaho in a couple of days.
But the moment I decided to buy the camera, it also occurred to me that I have never actually seen myself practicing before. So I bought myself a mini-tripod as well, and set it up in my living room yesterday morning, and started filming from Paschimottanasana all the way to Utplutih (I don't have enough memory in my data card to film the entire primary series; besides, I really can't bear to see myself dance in UHP...). So, I basically hit "record" immediately after the standing postures, and got onto my mat and started doing primary to Sharath's count all the way to Utplutih. So the entire video is done in a single take.
The final product is about 45 minutes in length. I watched it after practice, and I don't want to sound immodest here, but I actually thought it was pretty good. If you can see it, you'll see that I can't get into Mari C or D in one breath, and I wasn't sweaty enough to be able to bring my arms through into Garbha Pindasana within one breath either. But it is what it is. All in all, I have to say that I actually enjoyed seeing myself practice (does enjoying the sight of yourself doing practice violate any of the yamas, I wonder?). I wish you could see it too...
Which brings me to the question: Why can't you see it? (not that you'd necessarily want to see a 36-year-old Asian guy breath and fold himself into all kinds of shapes for 45 minutes, but it's always good to have options, right?) Well, I tried uploading the video to Youtube yesterday afternoon. The whole operation took more than 3 hours (never knew that uploading videos could be so much trouble...). At the end of it, Youtube politely told me that my video has been rejected because it is too long. Gosh... they could at least have the courtesy to tell me before making me wait three hours, don't you think? Or is this the price of being able to upload things for free? I suppose if I had wanted to use one of those cloud-based uploading systems, I could probably quite easily upload my video somewhere for a fee. But I'm just an amateur yogi, and am not willing to invest money just so that people can see my totally uncensored home practice... In any case, by this time, I was totally exhausted, and totally Fett Up:
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