Another Supta K

It's not wrong to dream...









But I know where my reality currently lies....(the photo is not me, but it is probably the closest to where I am currently at in Supta K, of all of the photos I have seen on Google Images (although her arms are lower down on her hips than I believe mine are, and her forehead does not appear to be grounded yet.....but it's as close as I could find, and it is pretty damn respectable, I might add)....
















I find that if I can allow myself time to relax and to ease into it, I can get closer to binding in Supta K. Actually, that is true for just about any posture, particularly Mari D. But it is so so so true for Supta K. Today after Erika's half led primary, I stopped at Navasana and went to the back of the room and finished my own practice.

An observation I made about Bhujapidasana: any dawdling and I'm toast. I need to hold those bhandas and hold the focus and then I can vinyasa in and out without collapsing instead of chatturanga-ing.

An observation I made about Kurmasana: I really have made progress! I always thought that I had a pretty good Kurmasana, even before it was "taken away" from me so that I could work on the Marichyasanas. But now if I let myself breathe in the posture for a nice, long time, I find my chest hitting the floor, my chin extending out, my legs beginning to feel lighter over my arms instead of feeling like they're crushing my arms. Something else I noticed: I am a lot better off if instead of sitting down immediately after jumping my legs around my arms, I balance for a breath in Tittibasana and THEN lower my butt to the floor. By doing so, I don't overstretch my lower back, exhausting myself before I even begin.

And Supta Kurmasana: I felt the best in it today that I have ever felt, and I had no one adjusting me. So how is that? Well, after a nice long Kurmasana, I worked VERY slowly, step by step, feeling each movement fully before moving onto the next.

1. I bent my knees UPWARD, rather than OUTWARD, making room for my arms to wiggle back.

2. Then I rolled my shoulders inwardly toward my chest, the way I would if I were attempting to bind to prepare for Bird of Paradise, turning my palms to face up, and grabbed the belt I had waiting behind me.

3. Then I wiggled my arms up over my hips, the belt between my hands, pulling it tighter as I went higher.

4. Only when I could wiggle my arms up no further did I start to rock back and forth to draw my shoulders further under each knee.

5. Only when there was nothing left to do with regard to the binding of the hands did I cross my ankles over my head. Not over my neck yet.

Holding the pose, having gotten into it in this manner, I felt as if I could stay there forever. As I sank deeper, I felt my forehead pressing into something. At first I thought it was touching some part of one of my ankles - it's hard to know which body part is which when you're all tangled up like that. It took me a moment or two before I realized that my forehead was pressing into the floor. It was delightful! If my forehead is on the floor, then my chest MUST be opening!

I am looking forward to trying it again tomorrow.

But a part of me longs for the time when Mari D was my final pose, when I got adjusted deeply in it every day. A part of me fears I will never make more progress in Mari D now that I am working on poses that come later in the sequence. But I know intellectually that this shouldn't be true - some teachers have their students go through Primary right from the start.

YC