Ashtanga Mix
Posted in ashtanga yoga, dog! on 08/16/2008 04:25 pm by karenGreat fun, the Ashtanga Mix class. Two hours of just messing around with a bunch of poses. Muscle Man (VBG’s son) taught the class, and it’s clear he thought the sequence through — the two hours flew by.
A short list of poses I recognized include:
- Marichyasana E
- Vasisthasana
- Vishwamitrasana
- Bakasana
- Supta Trivikrmasana
- Dighasana
- Trivikrmasana
- Nata Rajasana
- Salabasana
- Bhekasana
- Dhanurasana
- Ustrasana
- Bharadvajasana
- Ardha Matsyendrasana
- Gomukhasana
- and a bunch of weird stuff I’ve never seen before
We did a bunch from primary, too — including bhujapidasana, kurmasana, supta kurmasana and garbha pindasana.
And a lot of other stuff I can’t even begin to recall.
A very entertaining class. Smorgasbord classes really amuse me. Well, provided the poses are entertaining. I suppose you could look at a vinyasa flow class as a smorgasbord of poses — but they’re always the same old not-terribly-challenging poses.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 
***
The Cop is watching a documentary about mountain biking, with lots of footage of guys missing their lines and hanging their bikes up in trees, or missing jumps across cliffs, etc.
He is mountain biking in earnest these days. Managed to break the bike-before-the-current-one by hitting a rock face. Following the rock face crash, he took an old bike out for a ride in the mountains of Flagstaff when we were up there for a visit. Called to say he’d had a good ride, but thought his forearm might be broken (turns out it was just a deep bruise). So anyhow, yeah. I’m saving up for a rescue helicopter and flying lessons.
***
Oh, just remembered. We did hanumanasana and samakonasana this morning in mix class. The famous West Coast add-on. VBG taught me to include the poses in my standing practice, but after a while I knocked it off — back when I stripped out all “extras” because I realized how much work I had to do on primary.
Interestingly, I found that when I didn’t do hanumanasana every day, it actually got better. I’d go to VBG’s weekly led class and do my one hanumanasana per week and was amazed to find that it was better and better, week after week. Any time I decided to work on it and added it back into my daily routine, it got worse.
The point is, I haven’t been doing hanumansana for months, nor has VBG been offering a led class, so it’s just off my radar entirely. So it was nice to do it today and find that it was shockingly easy to just sink into the full pose, and felt delightful to throw a backbend into it. I imagine the ease is because of all of the backbending work I’m doing, which is (according to today’s hanumanasana) opening my hip flexors.
At the end of the session, Muscle Man gave us some unstructured fun time — for inversions or whatever. And he offered to do dropbacks if anyone wanted. Why was I the only volunteer?? It’s kind of funny, I see assisted dropbacks as THE most valuable things I can “get” out of a class. What I didn’t bank on, though, was the way Muscle Man let me hit the mat on my own. He just made sure I didn’t crater. I think I looked shocked after the first one.
“If I let you go, you have… uh, a little fear. And it’ll remind you to keep your arms straight and push,” he explained. (Yes, explained AFTER the first one.)
Okay, though — I buy his rationale on this.
The Cop took some days off for puppy paternity leave. Hence my ability to go to the mix class. Next week, The Cop’ll be sleeping during class time — as he does after night shifts on Fridays. I need to teach the puppy to be quiet in his crate so I can go back to class again…
Crate training. Our current project.