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Goal for practice today: time. As in, reduce the amount of time to get through practice. I’ve been meandering along through 2 hour practices. This has been great, because I haven’t been killing myself trying to stick tight to the breath count, because I don’t like combining the sense of smothering with the experience of new poses. For I am a delicate flower, and when I have bad experiences, they tend to stay with me.

Today, though, I knew it was time (ha!) to start cleaning up the breath work and the pace. I was careful not to go berserk during the backbends (that section is where I can really tucker myself out and build up some anxiety), and once I was through that, I zipped along through the rest of the practice quite handily. Total time, surya 1 through end of savasana: 90 minutes. And I never felt rushed or out of breath. Well, not too terribly out of breath.

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Mayurasana. Starting to pull together, in the sense of the core pulling together and stabilizing. Moments aloft are few, but there’s some balance and some flight, and that’s all good.

Nakrasana. I’ve gone from not being able to go ANYWHERE in the pose, to being able to manage three lame forward hops, to (today) five slightly less lame forward hops. I consider this a victory. Now I need to get the backwards hops happening.

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It’s been a couple of months now, since MM suggested an all intermediate practice. I’m here to say that there were some mornings there where I woke up and had to REALLY NOT THINK about what was ahead of me at the shala. Discussions with myself about not thinking ahead past the current moment. Like putting a big tarp over the practice until I got into the Mysore room and unrolled my mat, and then “whoosh!” — pull off the tarp and start climbing the mountain.

Today, as I headed into my favorite part of second (everything after yoga nidrasana!), I just got happier and happier. I was ready to float feet-first into the air during the headstands. As I stood on my mat, waiting for MM to come over for assisted dropbacks, I was smiling. And then I realize what’s going on: endorphin rush. Ha-UUUUUUUge endorphin rush. Hey, where’d the vibrating nervous system feeling go?? (Not that I really miss it.)

I thought about our question: why do we do yoga? And my answer at that very moment was “endorphins!!” Not the most sophisticated answer, maybe. But at that moment, that was the truth.

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Going on Sunday to do an “Intro to Intermediate” workshop with David Swenson, aka, “The Man.” Muscle Man’ll be there, too. Ought to be super fun.