Day 60 - Body part surya namaskar

I got this text from Miranda (my neighbour) yesterday: "Anthea and I have a 108 proposal for you!"

(I love this. These two amazing women continue to have crazy and interesting ideas on how to vary the 108 practice!)

Their idea: We focus on specific body part for each set of 12 sun sals. For instance, we do 12 basic surya namaskar A, while concentrating our attention on, say, the knees and then, the hips, etc. Sounded like a cool concept, so we agreed to try it this morning.

We also agreed that we would, as a juxtaposition to yesterday's talkative practice, do our sun salutations in silence, so we wrote out a list to avoid the need for discussion. Here's our list:

1. Feet & ankles
2. Quads & knees
3. Pelvis, moola bandha + vagina ;)
4. Inner leg line/ spine
5. Rib cage & uddiyana bandh
6. Wrist & hands
7. Shoulder girdle
8. Neck & jalandhara bandha
9. Mouth, jaw & eyes

It was a really intricate and meditative experience. I felt that certain body parts we easy to connect with and others more difficult. My feet and hands were the easiest, probably because I'm used to doing that, but I had some pretty cool revelations in the process nonetheless. I discovered that, despite knowing better, I still lift the knuckle of my index finger in downward dog and so there is more pressure on my outer wrist and pinky finger, which for sure is related to my wrist and shoulder tensions. I also noticed that when I transition from forward bend to chaturanga, I most often step back with my left foot, unless I jump, of course. And when I step forwards from downward dog to the top of my mat, I use my right foot. Curious...

I had a harder time connecting with my pelvis and rib cage. I felt that there was too much focus on all at once and that 12 sun sals wasn't enough time to address each aspect of the area. Miranda and Anthea agreed stating the pelvis is "dense" and that there's a lot to it.

Next time we do this practice, I'll focus on less body parts. I think need more time to explore, because once I started observing a certain part of the body, so much information is revealed and I went deeper into the experience. This reminds me of practice my teacher Hart gave us to do for homework about five years ago. He suggested we place our hand on the floor for five minutes and just watch what happens. I'll admit I wasn't really into the idea back then, because I couldn't focus, but I think I'll give it a try now.


You can try this practice in any context. Let me know what you come up with!

Miranda's post-practice comment: "I feel so aware of my whole body right now. It's so cool!"

Day 36 – Reflections of the journey 1/3 through

As of today, I will have completed 3888 sun salutations. My friends, Jamie and Jeanine, suggest contacting the Guinness Book of World Records and see if I might be a contestant for most sun salutations. That would be pretty cool, something to cross off the bucket list anyway.

I haven’t done my practice today, because I slept in until 9am again today and then we got right into making pancakes. (FYI, sun salutations on a full belly of banana pancakes isn’t awesome.) We have scheduled a practice for about 4:30pm and as of now, everyone is keen. I’m starting to better and better about practicing. I look forward to it every day. I get high on the feeling of gliding into and out of postures effortlessly. Just thinking about it gives me tingles up m spine. I love being in my own world, where everything stressful and seemingly important falls away and I’m left with clear and floating feeling. It’s kind of like sex actually.

My body is transforming, as well. Not surprisingly, I have become leaner and much more toned. I not bulky, but I feel do feel a lot stronger. I am able to open jars all by myself and my capacity to lift heavy objects has increased quite a bit. It’s rare that I feel sore and achy, and if I do wake up a little stiff, the feeling is gone after the first 36 sun sals. The other day I had big pain in my tibialis anterior muscle, which is located at the front the shin and is mostly responsible for foot flexion. It hurt all the way up into my knee, but after a couple of minutes in sputa virasana, the cramping sensation completely subsided.

My appetite has changed too. At the beginning of this 108, I was rarely hungry despite the amount of physical activity I was doing. I just didn’t feel like eating. Now, my appetite is much stronger. I love feeling hungry, because it makes me excited about eating and there’s nothing worse that being ‘blah’ at mealtime. I don’t go for typical junk food, but I do like ‘organic’ chips, salsa and homemade cookies. Lately, I’ve been enjoying soups, stews, tripped out oatmeal and Vega smoothies, oh and dark chocolate.

Speaking of food, I learned something new today. Kat, who is ever conscious of food production, taught me how to read fruit and veggie labels this morning: If the number on say the banana sticker starts with a #3, it means it’s genetically modified. If it starts with a #4, the produce was grown with conventional agricultural practices. And if the sticker begins with a #9, it means organic. To remember these numbers, Kat suggests thinking of it as a scale from worse to best— three is least healthy and nine is the healthiest. Here’s a link to an article about why genetically modified food sucks: http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/ge/

* * *
Did my practice outside this afternoon with Jamie, Vito and Craig. The black flies and mosquitoes were bad, but no excuse to stay inside, so I adapted my yoga outfit accordingly.
(Those mesh jackets work great, despite how annoying they are to move in!)