DAY 10 and 11 and Posture Clinic with Esak Garcia

I did my daily duty yesterday and took class.  No doubles.  I'll get to my double when I am good and ready.  Afterwards I realized how I have just been taking LIFE just a little too seriously lately- at least I don't go down the dark path for long!   I used to go down tunnels and furrow for miles.  Maybe that's why my rabbit pose rarely is a struggle!  It doesn't feel good to be bitter about things and hold onto ANGST nor does it feel good to be hyper-sensitive about the little things in life.  It certainly doesn't help the yoga practice any either.

More and more I am learning to shed the NEED to have an ego.  I've gone so long holding on to my little scrap of self-esteem and ego as if it were important to have one.  Is it really?  Self-confidence, faith in yourself as a child of God - I'll go there, but not sure I need that ego as much as I thought I needed to have one.  It's also too easy to be ashamed of having an ego but never self-confidence and faith which is rooted in the more fluid JOY and personal development as opposed to the ego which is rooted in fear.

Okay, went on a tangent there. So today was Day 11 and I took class at Bikram Yoga Quincy with guest teacher Esak Garcia followed by a 4 hour posture clinic.  I must say it is so important to change it up and go to different studios and hear different teachers deliver the dialogue.  Change of environmnent, adjusting to the energy of a new space and how your yoga feels in it plus just the different sound of someone's voice following their timing and rhythm keeps you engaged in a new way.  He was fabulous and very genuine.  His direction was exactly what I needed at this time for my practice. 

In the class, he stressed breathing and maintaining stillness and calm both in the postures and most importantly in between the postures.  His themes for the posture clinic were Normal Breathing, Back Bending particularly including the THORACIC part of the spine (upper), followed by HATHA YOGA and how the symmetry in the postures as well as the series.  We spent considerable amount of time exploring NORMAL BREATHING which IS 80/20 breathing.  The dialogue sets it up every time - demonstrations on Half Moon Side Bending, Standing Head to Knee and floor Bow.

Take aways for me are that the breathing allows you to access the strength in your muscles to hold the postures longer, that it might be incredibly difficult at first but working in this way allows you to build the strength in doing it the right way - and you CLEARLY know what muscles need to build! Sucking the stomach in provides resistance to the diaphragm muscle in order to strengthen it and is part of this breathing, being particularly cognizant of controlling the breath at the beginning of the inhale and exhale.  Great note for standing head to knee is to squeeze the ankles together and thus the inner legs/thighs in pranayama flexing the anterior tibialis (there was a massage therapist there who told him what the muscles were called and he enjoyed saying it over and over again to our delight) then applied it to standing head to knee.  Difficult to sustain for me right now but really adding some more stability to my balance.  I got a tip on locust engaging the tricep muscles by reaching the fingertips down to the toes and shifting the body forward. I will remember to let the deltoid muscle brush my cheek and travel along the jaw to the chin in Standing Bow and work to kick my toes to be in line with my standing foot.  We also explored what that shoulder in line felt like before doing standing bow.  We played a game of "find the cramp" learning to engage the back muscles in standing bow and watched the upper spine muscles "percolate" when fatigued in balancing stick.  We saw for ourselves Ha-Tha in action and the tournaquet effect of the postures with delight. 

So much to absorb but for tonight - I'm tired... sore in the stomach (from sucking my stomach in), the scapula and upper spine, the lower back from "find the cramp" and in my anterior tibialis; however, it's a good sore and looking forward to exploring it again tomorrow.