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Yeah, what he said.

I’ve been using the Maehle technique, too. It’s consistent with the principles of deliberate practice.

One of the things I’ve always been amused about, when it comes to deliberate practice, is that it is recognized right up front that deliberate practice is not fun. The whole idea is that you are practicing at the very edge of your capability, which means you won’t be getting the ego-fulfillment of being able to do something easily. Basically, it’s grind, grind, grind, stretch, stretch, stretch. Sounds familiar?

This morning is led intermediate with Andrew Eppler, who is visiting from Oklahoma.

This morning I did a random practice session, mostly with the intention of flipping in pincha mayurasana (to make sure I don’t develop the fear again) and to open up my psoas muscles a bit. Tomorrow morning is intermediate with Manju, and I didn’t want to face it after the moon day and then a day off. I felt I must prepare.

And then I was kinda lazy. I started off imagining a long session, but that impulse faded pretty quickly. I do value my days off! So I did a bunch of random stuff until I felt warm, then did some flipping. Not only does it not hurt at ALL, it is totally fun. I am still amused at how much it pleases me to flip. And then I realized that it is now much harder to balance! Apparently fear helps me defy gravity. Meh. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. The only thing I really didn’t want was to be in the “trying to launch but afraid to because I might flip” situation. It may play out that I just flip over and over as he counts to five, but I dunno, that doesn’t bother me for some reason.

The other preparedness stuff revolves around an upcoming visit from The Cop’s parents. They arrive on Wednesday and stay for a week. First order of business is keeping cranky Daisy in a muzzle at all times. Second order of business is cleaning the house. Siiiiiiiiiigh. I have a level of cleanliness that is acceptable to The Cop and myself, but then throw in house guests, and the stakes seem to go up. The dog drool splotches on the tile floor just seem normal to me. But they’ve got to go when there’re guests. At least, I have to TRY to get rid of them; they are immediately replaced, so there’s a Sisyphean aspect to the whole project. Between the dogs’ drool and desert dust, there’s just no way I can pull off an Architectural Digest facade.

How many times did I flip over this morning? Not sure — a dozen times, maybe? Did the guy next to me enjoy the merriment? Possibly not.

I’ve been going to an open studio at Volleyball Guy’s place on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Presided over by The Poetess. There’re usually 4-6 people attending. I open the doors at 5:30 and get started. Official hours are 6-8 AM. Anyhow, The Poetess spotted me on a few flips this morning, and then I did a bunch myself, growing progressively more giddy as I went along. Lying in savasana it dawned on me: I am totally an endorphin junkie, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had the fear-of-falling endorphins. I’ve been flashing back on the climbing days since I’ve been working on flipping the pincha.

I know all of the backbending work of the past couple of years yields endorphins (that’s why it’s so compelling to do it every morning), but I haven’t had a big “falling and surviving to tell about it” rush for many years. So woohoo to falling out of pincha mayurasana, perhaps the closest one gets to rock climbing thrills in Ashtanga.

I actually had to stop and remind myself to try to balance at the top, which is the whole point of doing the posture! I got carried away, though, with launching myself up and over. That seemed like the most fun.

I tried to research rolling out of pincha mayurasana. Not a lot on the web. This was amusing, though.

Armed with little knowledge, I did a bunch of tuck and rolls out of baddha hasta sirsasana C. I’m not sure if I’m doing it right, ’cause I’m jolting my upper back, but nothing really painful. I’m just kind of a baby about jolts — I think it’s because I used to suffer sudden migraines, and a jolt could set one off. I don’t get migraines any more (thank God) (and I’m already feeling jinxed for having written that) but the reluctance to slam my body on the ground remains. Silly me.

Okay, so probably a dozen falls out of BHSC. Then I go up into pincha mayurasana and totally stick it. And don’t want to roll. Suspect I need more information (while recognizing that information-gathering is an excellent tool for procrastination). Here’s the question, though: am I supposed to lower my head to the ground before I roll/as part of the roll?

***Update***

After practice, I was chatting with Vanessa online & decided to give it another go. This time, I had the good sense to go into the back bedroom, where there is carpeting (softer than tile!). And there is also (duh!) my foam gymnastics wedge. So I pushed the wedge up against the wall so it wouldn’t slip and launched up into pincha — and over! Wheeee! Then I got further from the high end of the wedge and did it again. And again.

It all sorts out by itself. I didn’t need to think about putting my head down, it just lowered to the ground as I went over and landed in a backbend. Less dramatic than the tuck and roll, but that’s because I’m a crappy tuck and roller, as my martial arts teacher probably noted, back in the day.

So now I all have to do is practice it a bunch of times to make sure I get past the impulse to do any panic flailing. Up and over. Up and over. Up and over.

And as soon as I flipped the pincha mayurasana, what did I think? “God, I’m scared to flip my lotus in karandavasana!” Really? Is there no end to this?

On Sunday, I’m attending a led intermediate with Manju, who is in town for the weekend. This morning at practice, I felt pretty scared about it. For one thing, I am very nervous about practicing pincha mayurasana away from the wall. I kick up every morning and don’t touch the wall, but I know it’s there. Sigh. I need to just flip it and get it over with, but I am afraid to do it alone (what if I die?) and afraid to do it around other people (what if I traumatize them when I die?).

Hubris, to even go to the class? Sure. But I’m so curious to hear what he has to say about the practice, at least up to pincha mayurasana. After that point, I’ll just flounder. But that’s fine.

Work is utterly insane these days. The design and production teams are slated for projects through the end of the year. Tightly scheduled, as in: if someone misses a deadline, everything falls like a line of dominoes. Fun! All of the design and production involves hordes of people and cross-functional teams. So it’s like a huge gamble with chaos on one side and the triumph of discipline on the other. Oh, and gods with lightning bolts up in the heavens, I suppose. Go team!

At the end of this, or maybe *almost* at the end of it (if all is going well), I am heading to Mysore. Either December or January. Or maybe some of both. We’ll see.

No Karanda Krashes this morning, which was kind of sad. As Grim notes, the falling on your butt thing is amusing. I’m not sure why — perhaps some special kind of grounding of the chi. Like a spanking from the universe. Primary was lovely and the happy, energetic kind of blissful that I especially enjoy. I only use the Shuffle and earbuds on Fridays, and at the end of my practice, I realized that in order to continue on in my exquisitely happy state, I had to go to the iTunes store and download a bunch of Beegees songs.

This morning, I did my baddha hasta sirsasana C, made a lotus, lowered my knees, raised my head, bounced off my arms, and landed on my butt.

Did the same thing again. Lowered my knees, raised my head, and stuck the landing! Yay! Very fun. I don’t do any pose more than two or three times per practice, and I limit the number of poses I do more than once, and I limit the number of practices where I allow re-tries at all. Usually that’s mostly about self-preservation — how many times in a row does a human want to do kapotasana, right? Even though I am now officially in love with kapotasana, doing multiple kapos is just too exhausting. Not the karanda thing, though — that’s just pure fun. It is so entertaining to just do it over and over again.

Okay, so the next thing will be to lower my knees, raise my head and land, then lower my forehead to the ground and come back up. Sounds so easy when I type it. Then the next stage will be to lower without the head. And then, in alternate-reality theory, to lower and come back up without the head. Fun!

Let’s watch Laruga do it for reals.

Did an exercise Kino mentions on her DVD for learning karandavasana this morning. Went up into Baddha Hasta Sirsasana C, folded into lotus, curled my lotus in and lowered, finally lifting my head up and landing my knees at the very bottom. Time spent landed on arms: about .5 seconds. Then I fell on my butt.

Self-myofascial release. Foam rollin’.

Okay, so I’ve been using the foam roller, and this morning’s practice was very weird, because something was missing. My tension exoskeleton. I didn’t even realize it was there until it was gone (or at least diminished — who knows what’ll happen as I carry on with the rolling…). I thought, “This is like practicing with an epidural!” — there was no sensation of tension in my legs or across my lower back. My response, truth be told, was fear — I don’t know how to protect myself from injury if there isn’t that tight web of “holding things together.”

In sirsasana, I felt like my hips, legs and feet were freely spiralling straight up into the sky.

I never realized how much “control” (i.e., tension) I kept in my outer thighs and piriformis. No wonder internal rotation seemed so difficult and counterintuitive.

Is this really obvious and I just got it, or is the whole idea just a delusion? This morning, as I tucked my (tighter) right leg behind my head, I realized that the hip joint isn’t the sticking point. It feels like the resistance is actually coming from my IT band. I grabbed the foam roller and rolled the IT (yowch!), and then resumed. Seemed to have some effect on the tightness… Maybe I should ditch the extra curricular pigeons (which have never really seemed to do anything), and go with some runner’s IT stretches…