Home Practice

Why do I always crave tea after doing yoga?  I'm sitting here at home, post yoga, drinking some yummy Mediterranean chamomile tea, still listening to my savasana playlist (Tracy Chapman at the moment).  This morning I got up early, but just a few minutes too late to catch my bus to Stephie's 7 am class.  I was up, though, so after bumming out about it for a few minutes, I decided to do some yoga on my own.  For motivation I downloaded a couple new dance tunes as suggested at elephant.  Music is soooo helpful for getting out of my head.  

My tailbone area has been hurting so I decided to address that immediately with a yin baddha konasana (my sanskrit spelling is a little rusty right now, sorry).  This is probably my favorite pose because I can always do it no matter my energy level.  Hanging your head down and shutting out the world while opening up your hips is always therapeutic.  I could feel my tailbone and pelvis spreading and opening into a new state of spaciousness I desperately needed.  

I eventually rolled forward into malasana (squat) and settled my weight into my pelvis and hips and felt my low back start to soften.  From there I immediately jumped to down dog but the pain in my sacrum area was still a bit too much to straighten my legs and tilt my tailbone to the sky so I dropped to all fours and and did a few delicious rounds of cat/cow tilts.  Next I did a frog and finally my hips and low back started feeling more open.  I did cat/cow again for good measure just because it felt good.  I don't know what came over me (it was probably the dance music) but I was in the mood for strengthening so I did some core strengthening work from all fours, which really heated up my body and let me release a lot of physical and emotional tension.  

I had thought maybe I'd take notes on what I did and try to design a yoga lesson I could teach to others.  Or come up with an idea for another YouTube video.  I got out the Lulu Bandha's Teacher Training Manual for ideas.  I started doing the very simple Lunge Salute Sans Vinyasa on page 93 and I kept repeating it.  

Lunge has become one of those formerly simple poses that now I feel like I don't know how to do.  There's so much to think about.  I can't quite get all the things I know about it to line up.  I hang out there in lunge, thinking through the instructions one thing at a time: shoulders down, check.  Tailbone tucked, check.  Don't sink into the front hip, check.  Heart open---wait, now my low back is compressing!  It's such a beautiful pose but I feel so stiff and awkward in it right now. 

Anyway I moved at a fairly fast pace through a few rounds of lunge salutes, throwing in a vinyasa here and there.  As I got out of my head and into my body, my yoga no longer needed a purpose, whether to get me in shape, to enlighten me, or to serve as fodder for teaching others.  All that mattered was that it felt great!  Eventually I dropped down for another frog, cat/cow, side plank, child's, and pigeon.  I had planned to get back up  but pigeon grounded and quieted me so much that I simply did a supine twist, switched on the savasana playlist, laid back and let go.