Heather - Days Thirty-Seven thru Forty-Three

One LONG ladies holiday for me. I have to confess, I found it better on many of the days over the last week to not practice at all. This particular cycle was VERY rough, I worked a fifty-five hour week and was exhausted and in pain much of the time. My yoga was sleeping as much as possible, (please don't think this is a cop out, most of the time I am annoyed that my practice has to stop, but this time it NEEDED to). There were three days I did practice, however. I did a short yin practice one night, a longer restorative practice one day, and then the practice I would like to talk about was REALLY fun for me. It was on Sunday. One of the newer yogis in our studio, Tara, was dealing with the same issue I was and I was mentioning to her how I wanted to practice, but wasn't going to due to my predicament. She was curious, so I explained to her about energy flows and abstaining from over stressing the body or inversions. I told her I was going to practice, and I wanted to move, but that I was going to work on designing some sun salutations without the forward folds and down dogs. I invited her to join me, if she wished and she did. So we started off with some cool VERY restorative work: viparita karani (legs up the wall) is a particularly strongly recommended pose for those on their periods. We did some supported supta badha konasana with the bolster under the length of the spine, and then worked our way through some slow warming suns sans the inversions. Basically, in involves moving from utkatasana (chair pose) to high plank without the uttanasana (standing forward fold), moving through the vinyasa, and landing in child's pose rather than adho mukha svanasana. It is an unnecessary element, but if you want a little more warming, or just really like jumping around, then go for the jump backs and jumps ups - as long as you stay low. After a few modified A's, we added the virabadrasanas, etc. etc. Then we moved through a relatively brief lunge series, opening up the shoulders with binds, opening up the quads, etc, etc. We concluded with a long beautiful svasana with lots of props.

A couple of thoughts here: I chose, intentionally to avoid poses like twisted chair, or any twisting poses that forced the abdomen into the leg. I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with doing this, but if you feel bloated, or crampy, as I did, you may find this to be unfavorable. But twisting away from the abdomen, such as putting the body in a lunge with the right leg foward, setting the right hand down on the inside of the bent leg and opening the body to the left side by reaching that left arm up to the ceiling.

Also, in order to honor that downward flow, avoid mula bandha. So, you can do ab work, if you can practice it without engaging mula bandha. If you don't know what I am talking about, there is a good chance you don't engage it anyway, so don't worry about it. =)

So....surrender. That is what the last week has been trying to teach me, I think. It is a strong reminder that women are blessed with that nature is not in our control, that our bodies rule us, no matter what we have the ability to do to it with our diet and exercise and other habits, our bodies get the final say. We can eat whatever we want, knowing we will get fat or thin, run as hard as we want knowing we will sweat and pant, snort coke knowing that we will deteriorate our nasal passages, but we can't choose how long that will take, and we can't make it stop. All we can do is learn our own bodies by listening and experimenting - though not so much with drugs, please. ;) Yoga is many things, and one of those things is the art of developing your ability to hear your wisdom - please notice I did not say develop your own wisdom. Your body already knows what it needs, wants, and doesn't need. In our society we get pulled into the dramas and spectacle of everything around us. We get caught up in the requests and desires of our loved ones, bosses, friends. We get lost in sense desires and grasping and aversion and it takes time and practice and devotion to go deep and listen beyond the chattering monkey mind.

WishinG you happiness and metta from a little dot in the universe called Boston,
Heather