donutszenmom.com

Led primary this morning. Looked like around 20 people. HOT as hell. It was pretty nice. I know there are people who come to led class once a week and that’s all the Ashtanga they do. I have no idea how they can sustain that kind of practice — doesn’t it HURT if you only do it once a week? I’m thinking of running and weightlifting, and I know that if you do those things once a week, they never become easy. I don’t know. I admire the once-a-weekers’ courage. I wouldn’t put up with that kind of pain.

***

I love baddha konasana. When MM suggested I do up to marichy D and then my intermediate poses, I immediately started doing ALL of primary and then intermediate poses. Because once I’m at marichy D, how could I not do baddha konasana?

If you look back through these archives, you will see blood, sweat and tears devoted to this asana. It is definitely the pose that I’ve had to work hardest on. In fact, there were months there where I couldn’t do it at all because my right piriformis went berserk. And then months where I’d do it and the jump back out of it would be stiff and one-legged, because I couldn’t immediately extend my right leg once I was out of it.

Now, though, I love it! I can fold up and put my sternum on my feet and press my knees and chin into the floor, and it all feels delicious. Especially the little crack in my sacrum. That’s the best!

I never really focused intensely on this pose. It was so seemingly opposite anything my body had a tendency to do that I just took it in stride and made an attempt at it, day after day after day. I think it may have been a full year of VBG picking up a sandbag — two at the beginning — and plopping them down on my back. Still, through all of it, actually GETTING this pose to budge seemed like such a pipe dream that I never really got invested in the whole process.

And now it’s my favorite pose of primary. In part, no doubt, because it took a lot of work. Even sans the emotional drama.

I have this little dream that some day I will feel the same way about kapotasana. Something I worked my ass off for, something I wasn’t “made to do.” But something that’ll be super-satisfying in the end.

***

Italian food tonight! The Cop is taking a week of vacation and booked reservations at a place we love. I was just talking with My Gift and asked her to join us. I hope the restaurant doesn’t have a fit about the extra person.

***

Oh, and a little story. I was doing assisted dropbacks with MM and then he had me do a urdhva dhanurasana and was pressing down against me and encouraging me to press up into my arms and legs.

“More into your arms!”

“My arms don’t straighten!” I said. “Why is that?”

He made strongman arms. “You’re like me,” he said. “Too many lat pulldowns.”

“What am I going to dooooo?” I said dramatically.

“Get a new body next lifetime?” he suggested.

Yes. Next time.