Yes, that’s my feet in the picture. I thought I’d paint my toenails and now I’m not so sure I should’ve painted them the loudest pink colour I could find!

If you look closely at the left foot, there’s some dark discolouration on the outer foot below the pinkie toe. That’s a mat burn scar from the time I stupidly forgot my Mysore mat. I think it was a Saturday morning practice and I wasn’t sufficiently awake enough to be able to clear my feet off the mat.

So the learning is:

1. Wake up properly before practice
2. Engage the bandhas more
3. Remember the Mysore mat

So anyway, moving on.

My boyfriend has commited to trying Ashtanga yoga. Unfortunately, the next beginner’s class starts end of June, that’s quite a long wait but one I’m sure will be worthwile. I hope he likes it as much as I do! It would be nice to be able to talk to someone about yoga and have them understand what I’m saying. I’m so excited!

Oh, and I guess I should explain the title. C, my yoga teacher, had one of her “fun” classes today. It’s a led class loosely based on the Ashtanga sequence, but with added “fun” poses thrown in. I love C’s fun classes! She had one about six months ago and it was fantastic. It’s completely tiring, satisfying and exhilirating, not that normal classes are boring, but when you do something different, it just gives you an extra buzz. The class also reminded me not to be lazy in my normal practice and to cherish every asana, every breath.

She got us doing lots of different things, including an introduction to a third series asana. I think it was Koundinyasana A and boy was it something else! Just when you think you’re making progress in Primary series, you get a taste of something new, something you may get to do in the future and you just feel so humbled. You realise you’re just scratching the surface, that you have a long way to go, and to really appreciate all the people who have practiced yoga before you, for without their knowledge and wisdom being passed down, yoga would be lost and that would be sad.

Enough sappiness. What else did we do? We did some core strengthening exercises which made me realise I need to work on my core strength. We did a neat balancing pose which is pretty hard to explain, but I’m going to try anyway. The final state of the asana is standing upright on the left leg, with the right leg behind your right shoulder, your right arm binds over your right leg and behind your back. I have no idea if I’m making any sense, but this pose is neat anyway. I couldn’t do it at all, but I still liked it and can see it would help with my leg strength in ardha baddha padmottanasana, which I’m struggling with.

C also demonstrated a straight leg jump through, it was amazing to watch. So graceful, so controlled. She invited those of us who wanted to try it to go for it, but I chickened out. I’m still working on the strength to float through every vinyasa (with bent knees) so I didn’t think I would make it through and didn’t want to hurt myself.

Other notable bits and pieces: padmasana and shavasana were extra peaceful. One of those times where I could stay in the asana for much longer, if we weren’t already running overtime.

Times like these when you feel like floating on cloud 9 makes me glad I discovered yoga.