Thursday, December 18, 2008

156/183

Monday 10:30 am with Lenette
Tuesday Off
Wednesday 10:30 am with Lenette

I always enjoy Lenette's classes, and always seem to learn something from them.  There two classes were no different.  There's always a sense of good humor and fellowship in her classes, and she gets it without skimping on people's motivation and effort.

Today, she coached me through Camel.  She said that the first set was good, and I was only a couple of degrees away from having my hips and legs vertical.  So she pushed me to get it completely right in the second set, and said that I had done it.  Of course, this is a pose I can't see, but if she is right, that means I'm basically in the full expression of this pose now.  That's one down and 25 to go :)

She also walked us all through Standing Separate Leg Head to Floor pose.  I've been so focused on being able to grab my feet that I've kept them closer together than they should be.  She made me, and all the rest of us with tight hamstrings, spread our legs even farther.  And she did this in a third set.  It felt really good, and quite different from what I'm used to.  And she is the only teacher at our studio who would ever put a class through a third set of anything.

On Monday, she complimented my first backbend.  It wasn't because I was going back really far, but she could see how hard I was working to keep my hands together and my elbows locked.  Then later she pointed out that I needed to straighten my wrists in Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee.  I did, and it made things alot harder.  That's another cheat I was doing out of pure ignorance.  I love when I get attention to small details like that.

I've been a bit lax about posting here.  I thought it might be laziness, or perhaps because I've been feeling my posts suffer from being repetitive.  Today it hit me that it may be something else entirely.  Again and again in class we are told to try to get beyond judging ourselves.  Part of being present in the class hinges on being able to do the poses without scolding or being too critical.  Praise has its own pitfalls.  Anyway, in some respects, I realize I have constantly been judging classes, and my own performance, through this blog.  That raises a question, and I don't know whether I can answer it satisfactorily:  How do I go about writing a somewhat interesting or worthwhile blog about my yoga classes without bringing any judgment into it?  I suppose it may be possible, but I'm not sure exactly how that would be done.

And I'm pretty well convinced that comparing my performance from one day to the next, from one set to the other, etc..., only hinders my progress in the long run.  So I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it.  Next week I will probably have five days in a row off, and I'm going to think about some new approaches to this side of the endeavor during that break.

No comments: