Moon Day Madness & Obedience Class
Posted in ashtanga, dog! on 07/22/2009 09:36 am by karenYes, today is a moon day. I was conflicted about practice. My last moon day practice sucked! I specifically said that I wouldn’t make the mistake of practicing on a moon day again. Uh, yeah. Well. Mysore practice is only offered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. My greed won.
***
How did I know it is a moon day? Well, I kept seeing this little white tag on the outside seam of my left leg, right around the calf. What is that? Why have I never noticed it before? I wondered in bharadvajasana. Whatever.
As I walked out of the shala, it caught my eye again, and being freed from the haze of asana practice, I knew right away. I had my pants on inside out!
***
Did anything else happen that was lame or otherwise punitive-in-response-to-my-criminality? No. Very much no.
How about this:
I got the balls of my feet fully in my hands in kapotasana. Furthest I’ve ever been, by far. Woohoo! The Poetess was practicing beside me, and she got up and pressed down on my elbows when I had my toes. That gave me space to move my hands up a LOT (isn’t it funny how a LOT in kapotasana can be measured in inches and fractions thereof?). Anyhow, I was psyched.
Second thing: I landed the jump into bakasana for the very first time. Totally surprised me. It wasn’t from a fully stretched out down dog, but still. My usual MO is to try it once from a full down dog, then another from a full down dog, then one where the length of the DD is halved, then half again, and then I just do a plain old bakasana for 5 breaths. Today, though, I just took the short stance and landed it. I fell off pretty quickly due to surprise, but if I can do it once…
The Poetess and I did a synchronized practice from kapotasana through karandavasana. Great fun.
***
Waylon’s first obedience class with the trainer I used with Ty was last night. He did marvelously well, in part because we had the class outside and it was about 105 degrees. Which isn’t as bad as it sounds, non-desert-dwellers. It is tough on Waylon, though, since his short muzzle means his cooling system is compromised. The heat, though, makes him a better student; basically, he’s too hot to fight against the commands.
We got there a few minutes early. A couple of other dogs were there, at the other end of the park. Waylon and I walked down into the grassy area where class is held, and he immediately found and waded up to his ankles in a thick mud puddle. Then he ran into the long, lush grass on the side of the hill. As all of the other dogs and owners assembled and the teacher showed up, Waylon was rolling luxuriously on his back in the long grass, snorting and chewing clumps of the green stuff and waving his mud-caked feet in the air.
Really, his name is perfect. He is such a good old boy.
07/22/2009 at 10:58 am
Bakasana B!
Speaking of superstitions… no practice on moon days!
Riiiiight.
07/22/2009 at 11:00 am
Also, it’s funny. I’m in the exact same place with the ganda bherunda. Months of getting the feet nowhere near the floor, just kind of hanging in space. Then some months of touching the toes down on good days. Then regular toe-touching. And this week, some regularity in taking the balls of the feet to the floor. It’s sort of kapotasana all over again. In a good way.
07/22/2009 at 11:14 am
I stressed on kapo for SUCH a long time. Totally made it my focus. Frustration! Fear! Longing! Hatred! EMOTION! EMOTION! EMOTION! LOL!
All of that seems to have dissolved. (Those ideas turned into waves and particles and went the way of all quantum elements.) Part of why they dissolved is because MM gave me much more to do past that pose, so it got sucked up into the gestalt, rather than being the end-all, be-all. I see where that can sound like Ashtanga heresy, but I wonder if SKPJ EVER intended for us to invest so much Type A energy into acquiring “the pose you’re stopped at.” I suspect not. (There’s some cultural excavation work to be done here, but I leave it to discursively gifted academics.)
Bakasana B was the other Ashtanga alternative: didn’t care about it one way or another. No emotion. And then one day (today!), the physics came through for me.
07/22/2009 at 11:17 am
Oh, and superstitions: MM adjusted me in bhekasana. Stood up and said, “Tight today.” I was HORRIFIED and ANGRY (the room was hot, so pitta burned bright). I wanted to scream, “Don’t SAY that to my MIND!” Made a little internal vow to have an exceptional kapotasana to prove him wrong.
All of this, all of these waves and particles, in a split second. And none of them conscious ’til I just applied the words.
We really do live in a dream.
07/22/2009 at 11:20 am
hahahahaha!!!
NICE.
07/22/2009 at 1:02 pm
Karen, your comment midway down here, ought to be posted in shalas worldwide, about Kapotasana. Seriously.
That is EXACTLY how I lived the pose for a while (wait, a WHILE?? dude, try TWO FREAKIN YEARS) until, essentially, seventh series made me give less of a fuck about it.
07/22/2009 at 7:11 pm
This sentence is priceless:
“Waylon was rolling luxuriously on his back in the long grass, snorting and chewing clumps of the green stuff and waving his mud-caked feet in the air.”
What a character! I love Waylon reports.
Moon day schmoon day. Maybe the pull of the moon affects some, but I’ve always thought it was just a way to have a built in break. Take it or leave it! I’d have gone to the shala too… no way would I give up a shala day for the new moon.
Kapo! balls of feet! Fantastic developments.