It's been awhile since I saw Amy. Her little girl came down with pneumonia, had a fever that reached 105, and went to the hospital twice for it. During that time, her boy got a fever of 104, and she and her husband also got sick. So she's had a really bad couple of weeks, and seemed to be really happy to be doing something other than attending the sick.
Class was good and hot. We finished at 107 and 40% humidity, and it had probably already come down a degree or two by that time. Often, that kind of heat will knock me out of a pose or maybe two. Instead, I was pushed to the very edge at the end of standing series, but held on. I lost my breath after the second set of Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee, but there's no point in sitting out Tree pose since its basically a resting posture anyways.
Balancing Series was very good. I fell out of Standing Head to Knee twice, but my kicking out was better than its been recently. I was concentrating on flexing back my kicking foot, and the difference was noticeable. I made it all through the full second set of Standing Bow. Amy doesn't talk during the second set of this pose, and it makes it much easier to concentrate. When the dialogue is going on, its hard not to measure how much time is left by the progress of the dialogue, and I think that that alone is a pretty big distraction. It's too easy to think "I'll never make it" and fall out, when it might have been possible to make it. Or to push hard as the last words are coming up, only to lose the pose. With silence, it seems much easier to fall into a state where there is just your image in the mirror, your breathing, and that slightly burning stretching feeling.
Sit-ups today seem much improved. My head still doesn't hit my knees, but its getting close. Now I've noticed that my knees come up a little bit as I'm coming forward, and I'm going to concentrate on keeping them nailed to the floor.
In the floor series, the good news came in Locust. In first set, we got to the last part and Amy started heaping praise on how far I went up. She said it was "awesome", and said "you go away for a little while, and its just amazing to see the progress people make while your gone" I would not have said my Locust was anything special, or even very good for me. It's really nice to know that a mediocre Locust still shows that sort of improvement. I don't get breakthroughs very often any more, so I really appreciate this kind of feedback, especially on the poses that I can't see.
A while back, Amy was in a class that Cisco taught where he made us do the second set of Blowing In Firm at almost a machine gun fire pace. The clapping sounds to me like its about 144 breaths a minute, or maybe a little faster. Amy has taken to doing the same thing in her classes and she has joked about it with me a couple of times. For the first time, I kept pace for the entire set, without having to gasp or slow down. And when it was over, I basically fell off my knees laughing. When I started, just doing the slow first set was pretty much impossible, so keeping up this ridiculous (and it really is ridiculous) speed felt something like a triumph.
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