Yoga Rest Day

At the beginning of my Ashtanga practice, whenever Saturday rolled around I was all "dang, it's yoga rest day! but I want to do my yogas!"

Now I'm all "BRING IT."

I guess I've reached another stage in my Ashtanga practice: the stage where I should probably start going to class 3x per week instead of 2. I'm getting into more difficult postures now, the ones where I have to be "placed into" the posture by my yoga teacher because I'm not yet flexible enough to find the posture on my own. I've been working on Marichyasana D for three weeks and haven't been given another posture (the posture I referred to on my Twitter yesterday was a closing posture), which is completely fine, because I am having enough work getting myself in and out of Marichyasana D and still haven't found a way to unlock it.

I'm also a bit perturbed because after a lot of work I was able to do successful jump throughs (not jump backs -- still haven't figured out how to get my knees pulled in enough for those), and then after a few days of being able to do jump throughs I suddenly couldn't any more, no matter how tightly I tried to tuck my legs in.

So I need to start going to class more, and I probably need to start getting up a little earlier to do so (gaah! 5:30 a.m.!). But I wouldn't do it if I didn't find Ashtanga completely intriguing, and if I wasn't enjoying myself. (I still think that Ashtanga uses the parts of my brain that used to get excited about playing video games: the parts that are all "ooh, how do I defeat this monster, maybe if I try this way or that way, ooh, now I did it! and I get to move on to the next level, which is 95% exactly like the previous level except for this one harder thing...")

Sometimes I look at the other students in Mysore class and think "wow, if I keep this up someday I will be doing what they're doing -- and that looks really hard!" Sometimes I think "why aren't my hamstrings as flexible as everyone else's? darn my short-legged genetics!" And sometimes I think "I wonder if I'll still be doing Ashtanga in ten years? I wonder if I'll still be doing it when I'm 80 years old? I wonder if it fights osteoporosis?"

But mostly I think "I need to come to Mysore more often."

Which means 5:30 a.m.

These days I (and my muscles) really appreciate yoga rest days. ^__^