Practice report, what gives?

Haven't been able to get myself to post here at all the last few weeks (wonder why?). It's only now, when I am procrastinating about doing something unpleasant (hint: what do college teachers do a lot of during midterm?), that I finally decided that writing a blog post is probably a little bit less unpleasant than having to do what I am procrastinating about doing.

Since this is supposed to be an Ashtanga blog, I suppose I'll start by saying a few things about my practice. Over the last couple of weeks, I have increased the number of second series postures in my practice while scaling back on primary. Here's the story: After coming back from Lino's Montana workshop last month, I incorporated half tick-tocks into my practice (see previous posts for more details on this). After a few days of doing this, it occurred to me that if I am strong enough to do half tick-tocks, I am probably strong enough to re-incorporate a whole bunch of second series postures back into my practice. Well, here's a little background story: when I moved to Idaho earlier this year, I scaled my practice all the way back to primary only in order to avoid injury. Since then, I have added back a few second series postures, but only up to Ardha Matsyendrasana.

But anyway, after I "received" the half tick-tocks from Lino last month, I started feeling like I might be up to doing more second series postures. I emailed Kino to ask for her opinion on this. She said that if I was feeling energetic after doing whatever I was doing at that point in my practice (which I was), that meant that I was ready to add on more postures. She suggested adding up to Pincha Mayurasana while at the same time scaling back to doing only half-primary in order to focus more on second series. 

So for the last two weeks, I have been following her suggestion, and doing half-primary followed by second up to Pincha. The first few days of this new practice were very interesting (well, actually, it still is, but that's another story). The first couple of days, I had to relearn how to balance in Pincha after not having done it for a year: The first day, for instance, I only managed to find my balance in Pincha on the fourth try.

But the biggest challenge thus far is probably Tittibhasana B. The first couple of days, I found that I couldn't bind in this pose. I consulted Kino about this, and wondered if this was due to added adipose tissue (as Gregor Maehle would put it). But somehow I didn't think that weight/girth was the issue: I can bind both sides in Mari D and Pasasana. Kino suggested that I work on lengthening across the shoulder girdle in the Marichyasanas: She thought it possible that a whole year of doing mainly primary series may have strengthened my rotator cuffs (which is great) at the expense of shoulder flexibility (which may be not so great). So I did accordingly, and tried to visualize my shoulder girdle lengthening across my leg when binding in the Marichyasanas.

The results have been mixed thus far. On "good" days like this morning, I can bind in Tittbhasana B (only at the fingers, wrist-clasping no coming yet...). On not-so-good days, I simply resign/accept the fact that the bind is not going to happen, and I walk up and down five times, looking very silly and foolish while doing so. Well, I suppose this means you won't get to see a video of me in Tittibhasana B anytime soon. But no worries. As some famous Cylon once said, "Do your practice, and all is coming."

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