donutszenmom.com

Knocked off at ustrasana. Yes, I have to ask my teacher to take away poses. I turned and did ustrasana with my thighs against the wall. It keeps me honest, to have that feedback loop when I start tipping back. Otherwise I go way back and lose the uprightness of the legs and the deep stretch in the back.

I was surprised, in my experiments with ustrasana at the wall, to discover that I am tight down the sides of my body. Really feel it from the ribs to the hips. Anyhow, the thoracic has to open up, and the lower back has to strengthen and stretch before I will really get anywhere with kapotasana.

Why didn’t I leave laghu vajrasana as the last pose? ‘Cause I can do it and I don’t want to feed my ego. I need to end on a pose that perplexes me and makes me work. Truth be told, I’ve been sailing through ustrasana and not really working it for all it’s worth. Gotta double back and face the music.

Anyhow, when I look at this picture of Arjuna in the midst of kapotasana, I see a good deal of work for myself in ustrasana.

In other news, I’ve been hating work. Trying not to focus too quickly on what the problem might be: I don’t want to jump to some reductionist “solution.” Need to kind of just explore the issue a bit…