Lotus

Funny those moments of realisation of progress, I’ve not practiced for about three weeks as first it was ladies, then I was ill then I was on an intense work course.

I’ve been back since Sunday, the usual sore hamstrings, even sore palms in fact, then today, I went in to half lotus and just had this thought maybe the other leg will go, and it did, not full yet but comfortably the whole foot over the knee!

One of the first yoga teachers I went to said it took her 7 years to do lotus, I can’t even remember her name but I remember that and funnily enough give or take a few months it’s 7 years since I went to my first yoga class, lots of water under the bridge since then… but 7 years somehow stuck and was right.

right now though even my ribs hurt, gah, I am regretting the three weeks off!

Puddle puddle

The weather today is something else, all winds and storms. I went for a walk this afternoon and was buffeted by the gales, which felt good and alive, with only a couple of drowned rat moments.

I had the viva yesterday which went fine and now have the Msc that has been haunting me for the last four years…. Which is quite something. Funny I started it before I had ever taken a Mysore class, which now seems so part of my life and back then I had never even done.

I’ve spent this afternoon since I got back pootling and starting to crochet some gloves for myself out of some wool I’ve had for ages which is a deep purple alpaca, they are fingerless, I am not that good.

I am now in a dilemma, I’m on call from work all weekend, so have to be available, but really want to go to the shala to practice tomorrow… I am actually rather unlikely to be called (haven’t been so far) So I am in a dilemma, is it totally obnoxious to take in a phone on silent? ….
sigh, I think that it probably is, so will have to practice at home for the second Sunday in a row.

Stress

I’m all stressed about the viva tomorrow, the final bit of the masters will be done, but all of the tension has moved to the middle of my back, all of a sudden Mari C has become stiff as anything again.

There is something that for me the stress and tension seems to sit in the thorasic spine somewhere I think between about T6 and T9 ish and just hovers there between the ribs there around the spine, perhaps erector spinae but I feel that it is more than that. I am sure that it is not without coincidence that that is also the area where my chakras feel blocked at times too. When I saw the healer all of the work was on the solar plexus chakra and the heart chakra, which seemed full of energy a lot of which was not mine. I do just feel to a certain extent that I still have stuff to clear there, I did know that at the time with the healer but was too scared to let it go in some way, I am hoping that the start of the shifting will enable me to go back with things in a different place so that I can let it go then. In fact I seem to have reasons every weekend until December that would prevent me seeing her so that time seems to be telling me that it is time to wait.

On a little of the same note, I have re-bought Creative visualisation (my father gave away the copy I lent him) as I feel that there is something in the idea of creating a vision of the life that you want and the idea that you create the abundance around you.

I will have complete relief tomorrow though after this viva and am going for cocktails with my friend in the evening to celebrate.

Back to the banda

Somehow over the last few weeks I had lost the really bhanda centred practice that I had around the time of sharath’s London visit.

When I got back to the practice today however it was back, the centredness and the ability to engage the bhandas which has been totally missing in action for the last few weeks to the extent that I wondered how on earth I had ever engaged the bhandas at will in the first place.

I have decided that the cough was asthma and have restarted the inhalers which as a bad girl I had been not taking as I felt ok! Will I learn? – well probably not inhalers are a pain if you don’t need them…

Practice today has left me totally and inexplicablely blissed out, I havn’t felt like this in ages, that total floaty bliss.

The cough

This dang cough, there was a little on thursday more on Friday, definately there Saturday and Sunday now really bad today….. Woke at 4.30 on a moon day and couldn’t get back to sleep….

I’m not sure what it is infection or asthma so have started all of the asthma inhalers and will wait a day or two before going to see the quack, I have had one comedy attempt to listen to my own chest, but gave up on that one pretty fast!

I’m planning on having a lie in tomorrow to try a bit of healing rather than inflict my cough on the shala.

Catch up

So the last week has been a blur, here are the selected highlights and low lights:

The Healer:
so last week I went to see the healer that I got recomended, she was fantastic, I wanted to free the energy block that I had in the solar plexus and heart, and through a kind of guided meditation I did a lot of work and got rid of a lot of bad energy, I now feel super grounded and feel that I kind of have my centre or flame in my heart. The really odd thing is that this is really expressed in the yoga so that I can really feel my energy body in savasana as I feel that I am getting back in touch with my heart. I also feel very grounded in walking that in it’s self is strangely meditative and feels really good.

The hen do:

Last weekend was my friends hen do, ice skating, and brunch and a magician, all fantastic and wonderful and fab and not a naff hen do item in sight….
I even learnt to do a magic trick, YAY.

the practice:
the practice felt like it came back this week, I loved D she has such great energy. I really seem to be making some progress in Mari D it feels more possible and I was actually put in to it on the first side on friday, which has previously seemed impossible. I had a chat about it with A today, who put it quite simply, it will get better if you lose some weight but no one can do that for you. which I guess is the truth that I can’t avoid…

the ex:
I met with the ex for the first time since the split on friday, I the injured party was fine and he was a depressed heap, felt quite sorry for him, as he cried through our meeting. can’t really help the situation though, he is in the situation he wanted to be in….

the wedding:
yesterday I went to my friends fab wedding, the first lesbian wedding that I had been to, it was lovely so warm and friendly and totally cool, which sums my friend up really. Registrary office then a really fab venue with a Thames view, london bus for the trip between with old fashioned sweets for the trip…. I helped make the cake with my cupcake contribution (yes I was up at 7.30 on saturday icing cupcakes, made 72), then there was a cheese cake too. the food was fantastic, there was Scottish dancing and swing dancing.

Still working on the block

Yep somehow I’m still blocked with regard to the yoga, I am still in avoiding mode, not sure why this is, well I have several ideas, firstly that I am not settling myself in bed as quickly as I would want and this means that I don’t want to get up, somehow living alone makes it harder to go to bed, or maybe i’m just not in the routine yet.

Also the last week has been really hard I don’t think my lovely friends wedding helped, to see people so in love when you are just not there is hard, especially as I was meant to be going with the ex.

Back to the yoga I got there today, after a big fight with myself in bed and practice was interesting, there is something about the breath and feeling bad as I found that to breath deeply was uncomfortable in a more emotional way than a physical way and it made me wonder if to avoid the yoga is to avoid facing that part of the emotion, which seems concentrated around the ribs, a funny physical sensation of emotional pain.

Then at the end of yoga I forgot completely to savasana, why I couldn’t say I realised when I was halfway through dressing, and thought too late to return at this stage, how weird, I have never done that before ever in all the yoga I have done.

I am going to see a healer tomorrow as I wanted to make some sense of the really trippy meditation experience that I had in Mysore, which I felt was the start of some energy shifting, in fact it was the most extraordinary experience of my life, but I felt the need to complete the experience it felt incomplete somehow and I feel that now is the time to approach this again, as well as having heard of someone recently, where it seemed to fall in to place at the time I was thinking about it.

That’s along with practising making cupcakes for my friends wedding – the first lot seem to have round tops not flat ones does anyone have any idea how to manage this, either that or I will just have to work round this with the decorations.

Slow and steady

Well I have restarted practice, three days in now, and it feels good, I am leaving happy and joyful, there are no major traumas at the moment at all it just seems to be working for me.

Makes me wonder what on earth I was scared of about going back…. I do wonder if it was about the fact that my yoga practice had emerged in the last years of a relationship going wrong and was it all about my avoidance of the relationship rather than liking the yoga? I guess that was one of the thoughts that I had about if difficult to know if it was the source of the fear though, could just be me rationalising why I didn’t want to go….

I think in some ways that the injury on my shin has made it easier to go back, I can be kind to myself and not push too hard as I have an injury that is visible and openly painful especially in Mari C, where my arm is tight against the shin. The bruise is stonking too, it has now extended to half of my foot, quite impressive
I think that it will take a while to go as I have bruised the bone and after nearly a week it is still pretty sore and swollen. (I will try and photograph it tonight and post it up here)

Facing the fear

I had known that I had been avoiding practice ever since the split, all for reasons I was justifying to myself, first I wasn’t sleeping until 4 am and getting up at 5.30 seemed ridiculous in that case (I know I know it probably would have helped the sleep), then it felt like i was getting back in to a sleeping routine and wanted to let it remain undisturbed, then I just felt that I didn’t want to reopen my heart, then I injured my leg on Friday and that was another reason not to get back on the mat on Sunday and Monday, and all of a sudden we are over two weeks since I last practised.. So I went to the shala today and realised on the way from the tube station to the shala, that I was really scared of going, my heart was pounding I felt anxious, I am totally not clear what I was scared of, the teacher was there as cheery as ever, and I practised as I could limited by the leg, and felt great all day.

I’ve GOT to go tomorrow I’ve really got to knock this fear on the head…..

Rest of the day was all new jobby, still not really started so my boss has given me the day off tomorrow, which will give me the chance to tidy the flat walk in to town and get a couple of things I need, then I’m thinking of a dance class in the evening.

Being looked after

So the fear I was feeling when I posted earlier about returning to the flat after the ex had removed his stuff was worse than finding it when he had. It was sad but did feel better as I don’t have to fear that any more.

My friend came over, we found I no longer have a hammer, so couldn’t put up the pictures that I thought we were going to, ate cheese cake. Then went out to the cinema and saw the September issue, which was a totally fab fashion fest – just the kind of cheer up junk that I need right now.

I am planning a return to the shala tomorrow, as I feel that I am more in a place to open my heart now.

now back to the crime drama on the TV