Blog on the Lillypad
Friday, July 23, 2004
 | A difficult session with new lessons
Everybody has "on" nights and "off" nights, and last night was definitely an "off" night for me, perhaps because of the dental work the day before. I had a headache; then I had a stomach ache, and I felt exhausted in the heat of the class. Our yoga classes are conducted in rooms that reach 90 degrees. Wisely, our instructor recognizes that staying chilled while stretching to that extent creates a greater risk of injuries to muscles and tendons. (My first Taekwon do master shared this philosophy.) But last night the heat made me dizzy and light headed. |
I just focused on the present moment and did my best. I think she could see that I was in some distress. I struggled a lot in the second hour of the class. As the others practiced their headstands, I went against the wall in my usual stretch and got my breath back.
 | After I had recovered, the teacher began working with me on bending over backwards---a posture that will take a long time for me to do, perhaps years. And then she started me on my way to the Dolphin pose, which is like a head stand, but you do it on your forearms. You start to learn the pose by taking the downward facing posture and then going slowly onto your forearms. The difficult part is to then lift off of the forearms and rest only on the hands in the downward posture. I tried this a couple times.
Ultimately, the Dolphin pose has the person upside down on his or her forearms, with an arched back, the head lifted. It is prepatory to the headstand, which rests on head and forearms. The headstand is prepatory to the handstand, in which the hands alone support the entire body. We have one or two students who can do the handstand. |
