86/92

4:30 pm with Miranda

The sciatic problem seems to be gone.  And now I can start to work a bit more deeply into the forward bends.  So that's very good news on one front.

But my left knee is tighter than ever.  Fixed Firm was worse than when I first started.  And I can feel tenderness on the inside of my knee in postures where I would not have guessed -- most notably on the first forward bend, and on the final stretching.  I'm wondering if there is something about those poses that is aggravating it.

Otherwise the class was good.  I felt strong the entire way through.  I was not even leaning forward between sets.  Instead, just maintaining a nice mountain pose and breathing steadily.  The only pose I bailed on was Toe Stand, and that was because of my knee.  I just didn't want to go into a full bend on the left side, so I did two sets of Tree instead.

The balancing poses were good again.  I made it through two sides of Standing Head to Knee without falling out.  Now I have to start figuring out how I'm going to lock the raised leg.  It's amazing to me how far yet there is to go, especially since I've already made so much progress.  But even with all the progress, I'm not even halfway there.

Standing Bow was really good too.  In the second set, Miranda kept extending the last exhortations to kick.  She was holding it one more time, and one more time again, just to see if I was going to fall out.  And I didn't.  When I was done, she almost laughed at me.  It was a very energizing thing.

And I think I learned something in Balancing Stick.  A while ago, I heard that I should be looking 4 feet forward on the floor, and I've stuck with that.  Today, Miranda said to just look ahead.  So I kept my head up a bit more than usual and tried to look forward.  For some reason, that just clicked and I had an easier time balancing, and felt like I was going deeper and stretching forward better than before. 

 Once again, its pretty astounding what a difference the small details can make.  And now I'm wondering how many times I've heard the same instruction in this pose and just not paid any attention to it.   More often than I would like to admit, I have stopped focusing on parts of the dialogue because I already convinced myself that I knew what I was doing.  Then one day, I pay attention to something that I hadn't really paid attention to before, and a pose will just open up.  And that leaves me to wonder whether I was just doing it wrong all along and holding myself back, or whether somehow I miraculously start hearing some details when I'm ready for them.

Teacher training started in Acapolco this week.  Blogging has taken off, and I've already found four student blogs.  I'm going to put up links to them.  They are only on day one, but its pretty clear already that this challenge I'm doing pales in comparison to what they will be going through.  On day two, and there were people being dragged out of the room, two given IVs, lots of cramping, lots of puking, lots of crying.  And everyone insists that Bikram is going easy on them.