Missed practiced all this week… my last practice was Monday morning.

It’s the stress I tell you, stress of work… working late… sleeping late… not being able to wake up… sleeping in… end up sleeping late because I slept in… no waking up early… no yoga class… no yoga.

I feel like crap. I feel lazy. I feel guilty. I feel sloppy. I feel… blerk…

I’ve decided to take yet another hiatus from classes next month, I just can’t justify spending $200 a month on classes I continually keep missing.

The up side… I save some money… the down side… no adjustments for supta k.

Bugger it all, I’m in a bad mood.

It’s becoming a habit. I couldn’t talk myself out of bed, instead, I talked myself to stay in bed.

Gotta stop working late and get to bed earlier.

On the up side, I have no pains or achiness today… it feels weird to feel “normal”… which isn’t really normal for me anymore, I’m too use to having something hurt/sore/in pain/achy.

I miss my practice Not garba pindasana, the rest of it…

of learning something new.

Still can’t do the roley-poley thing in garba pindasana by myself. I slipped off the mat again. I can do it with the smallest amount of help, but when it comes to doing it by myself, it feels like I have no chance. I get to the third roll around, slip off my mat and fall onto my (left) side with my arms stuck between my lotus legs. Yes, an elegant and attractive look.

I think it could be sweat slippage. Maybe I need to start bring in a towel again to lay down for some traction.

Mondays are relatively quiet in class. Plenty of room to stretch, which was nice. I even managed to get my hands on a spray bottle… yay!

And now for the daily “this and that hurts” whinge: My oblique abdominals, hip flexors and thighs hurt.

The joys of life when one works 7 days a week. If not for yoga practice, I think I’ll go insane.

No Ashtanga today, took a FlowYoga class. I wanted to do this last weekend but never ended up going. It was good, different and interesting at the very least. It’s revealed some weaknesses I’ve consciously overlooked for a long time, mostly, my weak legs. I usually try to breeze through warrior sequence (utkatanasana, virabhadrasana A and B) because of my lack of leg strength. Well, I felt it today.

We did a tonne of squatting and lunging and my legs gave out on me many times. A few poses we did were familiar, prasarita A, uttanasana, a modified form of parighasana, tiriangmukhaikapada paschimattanasana on bolsters and janu A.

Breathing was the hardest part for me. The class was tiny, only 4 students and 1 teacher. Ujjayi breathing wasn’t practiced. I kept finding myself starting ujjayi breathing, then having to tone it down so it didn’t bother the other people in class. I actually had to consciouly tell myself to stop ujjaya breathing, it’s so automatic for me these days.

There was some semblance of bandhas, the teacher kept saying “pull the navel to the spine”. Again, I found auto-bandhas on most of the time, both mula and uddiyana.

It’s nice to try something different once in a while, makes me appreciate my practice a little more. Can’t wait for tomorrow’s practice now… oh wait… garba pindasana’s waiting for me tomorrow… maybe I can wait

We need more spray bottles in class. Everyone seems to keep them next to their mat and it was such a full class today, I didn’t want to get up, walk around trying to find a spray bottle and bothering half the class at it.

Just my luck that I’m late to class on a day where everyone decides to turn up to class. There must’ve been 40 bodies in there. The only good thing was that I got a peripheral mat spot so I wasn’t stuck in the middle of all those (temperature) hot bodies.

So anyway, what was I ranting about today? Oh, spray bottles… yes… I would’ve liked one for garbha pindasana to make the arm slippage through the tight, tight hole between the calves easier. There was a spare bottle left when I got to sitting poses, but then after supta k, I looked up, and it was gone.

I looked around and it seems as though all the spray bottles were on the other side of the room. So I decided to play the squeeze game instead of getting up and stealing someone’s spray bottle. It was tight, but I got my arm through eventually.

Why can’t people replace the bottle after using it? Why do they have to keep it next to their mat? As if it’s *their* spray bottle, some of us other newbies need it too

I don’t think I like garba pindasana but it’s too soon to say for sure. It’s the rolling around bit. I fall off my mat onto the cold hard wooden floor then lose my mojo. I ended up needing an assist to roll my way around, but I got up to kukkutasana (mostly) by myself, no face plant either. My hand position wasn’t quite right, but hey, not bad for try #2.

Had to share.

Found it here.

Just when I’m starting to get use to supta kurmasana, I get given garbha pindasana and kukkutasana. So many new poses all in one week. My body is going a little spastic on me.

I’ve tried garbha pindasana months and months ago, and never really had a problem pulling my arms through my legs. I did that today and it was a bit of a struggle. Possible causes: I was not totally sweaty so didn’t have the slip factor, or my calves got bigger, and of course, it could be a combination of the two.

Anyway, so yeah, I’m rather indifferent about the pose itself. I got rolled around with some help, so we’ll see how spastic I’ll look in tomorrow’s practice when I’m likely to not get help. Rolling up to kukkutasana was not possible either, but who am I kidding? It’s not as if I expected to be able to do any of it by myself perfectly the first time around.

I’m fearing a face plant on over-rolling up to kukkutasana. Once I got up though, it wasn’t very hard to hold for 5 breaths.

I feel like I’m getting deeper into supta k too. I hope it wasn’t just my imagination.

The left hip, no… both hips are having some issues. No pain, just some weirdness. The hip flexors are sore, over stretched sore, I think. More weirdness wiht janu C on the left side; it sucked yesterday but was problem free today. What the?

I’ll never understand my body.

Had another sutra talk today. Third stanza. “Tada drashtuha svarupe avasthanam”.

My hamstrings are sore today. After all the paschimattanasana squashes lately, it’s no surprise.

In addition, I’m starting to get a weird burning sensation in my left hamstring during janu B when I bend forward. It’s in the spot where I sit on my foot, kind of near the middle of the hamstring, right on the belly of the muscle. I’ve had to be extra careful when bending forward as to not trigger that burning pain. I also have to wriggle a lot to get in the right position so there isn’t any burning. Weirdness. It doesn’t happen in any other forward bend.

I feel like I’m losing janu C again, on the left side. The right side is good, but the left side sucks. I thought it was the hip issues, but it feels more like a knee issue, which could be a hip issue… Ah who knows, all I know is that ever since that meniscus problem earlier this year janu C hasn’t been stable.

Got put into an excellent supta k today. I always feel like my left leg is going to snap off when it’s first lifted behind my head, but then once it’s in place it feels fine. I got my shoulders kind of tucked under my legs, which made the pose more comfortable. Note to self: get legs more behind the shoulders.

Otherwise practice was heavy and slow. I kept getting dizzy spells in standing poses and I took many extra breaths today. I wish I could blame lack of sleep, but I slept relatively early, so… well… who knows why. But still, it was a good practice.

Maybe it’s the extra kilo or so I put on over the weekend, but practice seemed a little harder than what I remembered on Friday. Lifting up to vinyasa was particularly difficult, but I managed not to slack too much.

Got put into supta kurmasana and this time there was no panic so I got to explore the pose a little more in terms of how it feels. Mostly it feels as if my head is being squashed. The pressure of my legs on the back of my head and my forehead on the ground is just… well… how to put it… like a bank safe being put on a pumpkin (I say pumpkin because halloween is coming up). It’s going to take some getting use as expected.

It’s my first asana where I need help getting into it.

I got a double squash in paschimottanasana. Once in B version, then when I thought I could relax and do my own thing in C version, along came another towel and another squash. Not that I’m complaining, it was just unusual. I think next time I’ll let the adjuster know that I’ve already been adjusted so they can go adjust someone else who may need it more than me.

Wish my headache would go away soon. I’ve had 4 cups of coffee, 2 aspirins, a tonne of water but no joy. Can’t think what could be causing it… lack of sleep?

Would you practice with 4 hours sleep? I thought I would last night when I went to bed at 1 am. I set my alarm for 5 am then promptly rolled over into a coma for 4 hours. The alarm went off, it rang for about 0.5 seconds (possibly less), I switched it off… thought to myself “you twit, you should know better than trying to delude yourself that you can practice yoga with 4 hours sleep”… rolled over again and slept for another 3 hours.

I’m a little mad/disappointed/sad/frustrated at myself for 1) staying up to 1 am, and 2) not going to practice. I even tried to justify that I’m practicing “non-attachment” by not forcing myself out of bed. That’s not a good sign when I try to justify my laziness like that.

So, no practice for three days.