Intuit - Into It

The Yoga Shala August Furlough Program is going remarkably well. Of course it's only been two days. And one of those days included not Ashtanga, but rather, a shameless detour to Jivamukti for some dogma-heavy, vinyasa-light posing. But still, I'm waking up early, I'm getting my errands done and managing to squeeze in some teaching, and I am practicing yoga.

Today I happily went back to my Ashtanga practice, thrilled to experience all 60 vinyasas from the start of Primary Series through final resting pose. Today, I made an effort to stay with Sharath's breath and vinyasa count for as long as possible without having to pause the DVD (except at the end of his Surya Namaskar A so that I could add two more of A and two Surya Namaskar B's before pressing Play again). I managed to get all the way through Mari D before I pressed Pause again, at which point I re-duxed Mari A, B and C and then did D twice. Then I hit Play again and went with Sharath all the way through Supta Kurmasana, at which point I hit Pause again in order to do some deep prep work for Supta K. Of course, binding is still a long way off, but then I am so Supta Kurmasically challenged that I will probably be comfortably executing Eka Pada Sirsasana before being able to bind my damn hands in Supta K (please don't read anything into my linking to a Yoga Journal article on Eka Pada, rather than, say, Arjuna...it is not that I have gone over to the Yoga Journal side during this rebellious phase of mine; the YJ link was merely the first link that came up when I Googled the pose, what a surprise, that).

Ah well. The beauty of my Yoga Shala Truancy is that I have no one to whom I feel compelled (right or wrong) to prove myself in order to have the the next pose bestowed upon me like a reward (whether perception or reality, either way).

One might look at what I am doing and scoff, "Yoga Chickie is now doing all of Primary, although she has not yet mastered Supta K." However, I consider that to be a glass-is-half-empty perspective. Instead, I prefer to view it as "I am practicing all of the Primary Series, and will miracles never cease, I am struggling in only ONE posture!!"

It feels GOOD to practice all of Primary. It feels GOOD to drop back. It all feels like I am doing the right thing for my body. Why am I not "trusting" my "teacher's assessment" of the pose at which I should be stopping (this was a comment on a prior posting, and I wanted to address it here)? It is not that I am not trusting Sir's judgement. I never said that I didn't trust his judgement. It is just that I am doing what I want to do.

As Sir has said (I am paraphrasing), your yoga practice should elevate you, lift your spirits, bring you peace and happiness. If it isn't, something is wrong. In my case, stopping at Supta K was making me sad and anxious. I trust my teacher, but I am a big believer that the ultimate teacher is within ourselves. I don't want that to sound melodramatic or overwrought. But I have a great deal of faith in my ability to intuit what my own body, which I have been in for 40 and a half years, needs. But what it needs is only half of the equation. The other half is what my body wants. And what my body wants is to roll through the rest of Primary, which lets me end my practice on a high note, rather than crumpled up in a ball, cursing my body and what it has been through and waiting for the aching to subside before I can even consider pressing up into a backbend. As I am practicing now, when I finish Primary, I practically spring up into my backbends. And my drop-backs feel like heaven. And I know that I will stand up on my own in the not too distant future. Again, it's my intuition speaking.

When will Supta K come? Not for a long time. Inuition. So, what will happen when I go back to Shala X? Well, first of all, Sir is the only teacher who has EVER gotten me to bind in Supta K. So, when he returns to the shala, I will be thrilled to practice there according to his rules. Until he returns, I am doing really really well on my own.

Isn't it supposed to be this way? You find a teacher. When you can practice with your teacher, you do. When you can't, you practice on your own.

(To answer another question asked on another post - in late August, no exact dates yet, the Yoga Chickie clan will be travelling up through New England and Montreal to arrive at Mont Tremblant on August 27. I don't think that I will be able to stop in at Darby's because I will be en caravan, although I wish I could because it would be fun to see S and meet the rest of you northerners).

As Miranda Priestly would say (I finished that bit of derivative drivel in one day, mainly because Dustin Rowles basically told me I had to, and I do whatever Dustin Rowles tells me to do), that's all.

YC


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