You told me so
Greg offered to start teaching me Second Series. Unsolicited. He just came up to me when I was backbending and asked me if I always stop at Setu B, and I was like, "What? [because I almost never understand what he's saying initially] Setu B? I stop at Setu B, yes." He then said that next time he would teach me some of Second Series - because it will help my backbends.
It's funny because last night, at a dinner at Pure Food and Wine (Matthew Kenney's raw, gourmet, amazingly delicious restaurant) with my fellow teacher trainees, I heard myself saying what I never thought I would hear myself say: "I wish I could do some of Second Series, just to make backbending easier."
Anyway, I guess people do move along faster under Greg's tutelage.
I'm sitting on my bed right now doing absolutely nothing. It's the first time in more than two weeks. I'll be doing nothing for the next 20 hours or so as I "prep" for my tri-annual colonoscopy, scheduled for tomorrow morning. Prepping for a colonoscopy is a bit like a cleanse, only Western medicine style. Basically, you drink a salty, fizzy drink, and a few hours later, you need to be near a toilet. For a few hours. And then you take some more salty, fizzy stuff and wish you would never see another toilet, ever again.
So, I won't be practicing tomorrow. I'll be under a twilight sedative, getting a flexible flashlight snaked up my tush. And hopefully, I won't have to deal with this for another three years.
I have to say, doing nothing is quite pleasant. I used to enjoy it quite a lot. I would have to defend myself to the H, who couldn't understand the notion of doing nothing. To him, it seemed like a waste of time. To me, it always played some part in every day. But since I've moved here, the work has been nonstop. There's always something else to unpack, something else to organize, something else to shop for, someone else to call about some service I need rendered or some arrangement I need to make. It's all been gratifying, creating a home, developing a garden, trying to be thoughtful with regard to the environment in ways that I was unable to do when I lived in an apartment in the city. But it has also been exhausting.
Now, I'm exploring the channels on the cable box, surfing the net, reading the blogs, gazing out at all the green, green, green....and loving it.
YC
4 comments:
Urdhva Ds is all you need. But hey, you wanted Second, you got Second, so it's all good, no?
I know I personally needed the dreaded Kapo.
I don't think that someone who is a natural backbender like you, V, can make that claim to someone like me who has difficulty opening my front body. I understand that the ashtanga system is built on the notion that you don't need the next pose to learn the one you're doing, but that doesn't mean that the practice can't be made more enjoyable and less painful by letting a person practice more backbending. I have seen this even at Guy's, where the pose-giving is conservative - he will occasionally give dropbacks before finishing Primary and will occasionally give Second before standing up. Even Eddie has given out the first few poses of Second to the occasional non-backbender...one of them reads this blog and has commented about it in the past. All I know is that I didn't ask and I would never have thought to ask to be given any Second Series poses. Honestly, I never even was interested in Second Series...I didn't know it existed when I started practicing. All I ever wanted was to get through Primary because of the therapy aspects. When I got all of Primary I didn't start wanting Pasasana - I only started suspecting this past week that my back would be less stiff when it came time for dropbacks if I either had more time to recover from the forward bends or had more backbending under my belt.
Why can't I "claim" something? You give your advice and your opinion on other people's practices all the time. Surely I must be entitled to doing the same.
I don't think you need the backbends in Second. I truly believe that someone who struggles with Urdhva Dhanurasana just needs to do more Urdhva Dhanurasanas. To me, giving you the poses in Second to help you with your Primary is putting the cart before the horse.
But of course, this is my opinion. I don't claim to be right, I only claim to believe in what I say. There are many who disagree, and that's just fine.
And as for you not wanting Second, please don't make me dig out the posts and quote you.
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