Pose triumph!

They say yoga is not a competitive sport, but for myself it is :)

I tend to be drawn to mastering 'pretty poses', and set goals for myself in the pursuit of them. For instance my first achievement was one legged wheel, where your doing a back bend and extending one leg up towards the ceiling. Full wheel is usually hard enough, and adding the leg up version makes it a balance posture bordering on inversion. Strangely you don't see too much instruction on the more difficult versions. Usually if your trying one of the harder variations its just something you need to work with a teacher and they spot you until you feel steady enough on you own. I dedicate alot of my practice to finding those little tricks that make poses more attainable. So I threw myself into getting comfortable with one legged wheel, and like a mad scientist of extreme bending I have some conclusions :)

When you first attempt to bring the leg up, your instinct is to increase pressure with your grounded leg. This is a mistake, because it throws your weight into the least supported direction, like pushing a tripod over by shoving a support between two of the supports. The 'trick' to be able to raise say your right leg, is to resist with your right arm as well. The arm then takes on the weight the leg is adding and distrubutes it to your left side which is fully grounded. So, as you begin to slowly lift your leg you want to imagine you are pushing harder against the ground with that same arm. So yay, success! I'm still experimenting with bringing the grounded foot to midline first, giving a more even tripod position, but for now I like being able just to bring my lifted foot down without having to switch foot positions. Next time, I'm going to work on getting my elbows down in wheel, *then* lifing the leg, muhahahah.... If I get realllly ambitious, I may try this:

One legged wheel, elbows down, while grasping the grounded foot. Holy shit! Isn't that amazing?!?

This is probably why they say yoga is not competitive, because you'll never be told your not doing the posture right as there are so many variations and you use the one the works for you. But for me, things like this are something to strive for. I think its fun ;)

Another pose goal I have on my list is 'Get my foot on top of my head in King Pidgeon'. Before class last week, the best I can do is catch my foot in the crease of my elbow and grasp hands over my head. In class my teacher helped me reach over my head and actualy grab my foot! This is one of those instances where a spotter comes in damn handy, I had felt like my foot was a mile away from my hand and I could never find it. She simply took my hand and placed it on my foot. It was funny, even though I was reaching for it when my hand first made contact with my toes my foot screamed 'AHHH! Somethings got me!' Like I said, my brain was telling me my foot was way far away, lol. And another funny thing, I was so elated when I got ahold of my foot that I broke out in a sweat, including my toes. Which made it very hard to hang onto my foot, which wouldn't have been a big deal except another class mate was taking pictures of me at the moment. In one shot I'm trying so hard to not let my grip slip off my sweaty toes that my front foot looked like a claw going 'raaawwrrr' with my toes going every which way, lol. So much for 'pretty poses', lol! She said she'd email me the pictures, I'll post them when she does cause they are rather amusing. But in the mean time, heres the same pose performed by one of my dance idols Rachel Brice, albeit way more flawlessly...:

Bellisima! Now *that* is a pretty pose! I'll be experiementing with this some more and see if I can come up with any 'tricks' to it to share. I've tried working with a strap before, but its tricky since your foot has to be pointed which makes the strap slip off. Not a good thing when your in a balance pose, which this does not look so much like one, but it is. Whenever you've got a foot off the ground, your balancing. But I'll give it a try again, seeing as I now know my foot is within reach behind my head ;)

The fun stuff I get to play with when schools out, squee! It is so nice having a few weeks off before going back for my 'real' degree. Grades still aren't posted for summer semester but I'm fairly confident I've got straight B's. I'm not 'officially' an associate college grad, but I think I'm good to go. Will be nice when I finally have that paper in my hands ;) Also another thing I should find out about this week are my massage boards. The outcome is either 'You are now licensed' or "Sorry, come back in December'. I should know by this Friday, the 14th. I'm trying to keep busy so I can forget about that ;)