TheBroth.com, yes that site I keep talking about because I’m involved in it’s development… anyway… there’s an online art competition running there at the moment, so if there are any artistic people out there and you want to give it a try click here for details.

You can see the entries in the contest gallery.

This one is mine (not that I can win, but hey..):

Man I’m in a bad bad mood. It’s getting to a point where I’m not sure when I was last in a constant state of good mood.

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, the mild yet highly irritating headache, impending time of the month and lack of practice that’s getting to me. I haven’t felt “right” in a long time.

At least I’ll get to practice tonight. Home practice albeit, but practice nonetheless. I know I always feel good after practice and the only thing that varies is the amount of goodness I feel depending on how good/bad practice was. That’s one thing I love about yoga, no matter how “bad” practice is, I feel good afterwards. Never had that with any other physical activity, not that I was that physically active prior to falling in love with Ashtanga.

Must remember: Things will get better, crappy moods don’t last forever.

And just coz I can… a couple of older artworks from my private collection made at TheBroth.

Now I’m annoyed because I had just written 3/4 of my blog when the browser decided to reload the page by itself. Silly thing. I’m telling myself not to be peeved at the computer, but I can’t help feeling annoyed.

Anyway, so I had written about a mini achievement. Hands down, by myself in prasarita C. Not sure if I’ve blogged about it before and not sure if it’s happened before and I just forgot. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting it, I was happy to not make any progress and just enjoy the practice I have but it’s always nice to be surprised.

I only did standing last night as I started practice rather late. It was a pity, because I felt like doing my full practice, but then I would’ve finished at 9 pm and that’s just too late to finish practicing.

I set the alarm for 7 am. Woke up before the alarm. Switched it off thinking I was getting up, then rolled over and fell back asleep. Crud. Nevermind, there’s always tomorrow morning.

On a different note, a little more yoga art:

Eka pada rajakapotasana variation this time. There’s a new feature on this artwork this time. If you go to the full sized artwork’s page at TheBroth.com, you can watch a little movie replay of how parts of the artwork was made. Only thing is, the replay starts where the artwork was nearly finished and I was just putting final finishing touches on it, so there’s not so much to see in terms of its formation.


And below is my attempt at eka pada rajakapotasana. I wasn’t in my usual yoga gear, just in some “at-home” lounging gear. I needed a reference for the hands, but it didn’t matter, the hands still turned out kinda crappy.

If I thought I was sore yesterday, today is worse, and yet it feels good in a strange way.

Practiced yesterday in the evenings and had yet another conversation with self in bed this morning at 7 am, and again, by the time I got up it was too late to practice. I don’t think I could’ve practiced this morning actually, the hamstrings are really complaining so much that I even had to take some painkillers.

On another note, the artwork you see is meant to be virabhadrasana B. Inspired by the wonderful lady responsible for Ashtangi.NET. J, I hope you don’t mind that I keep using you for my inspiration! Full sized version of the artwork here.

Back to a couple of practice notes. Garba pindasana is better now when I use my arms for leverage. I thought I had set off my left hip after I released the pose because it felt really funny/weird. It wasn’t painful or sore or tweaked, it just didn’t feel like the right hip and that got me worried, don’t want another injury to the left hip since I’ve just recovered from a couple! I took the rest of the asanas easy, especially the closing lotus ones. Turns out I didn’t hurt anything ’cause I feel fine today.

Started to bind marichyasana C again. The right side (first side) binds real nicely, the left side is stiffer. I still can’t completely close off that hip without pain, so again, I’m being kind to myself and not binding so tightly.

Jumped into bhujapidasana and kurmasana again. The novelty has worn off now, it’s just part of the practice now.

I ended up observing moon day and no practice on Saturday.

On one hand I feel good that I observed the prescribed days off instead of letting myself indulge in asana practice, on the other hand, I would’ve liked to move the muscles, or more accurately, I would’ve liked to try supta kurmasana yet again.

Moon cake festival is coming up, also known as Mid-Autumn festival. This year it’s held on October 6th, 15 days after the 8th lunar month. It’s an Chinese festival, nothing to do with yoga, except for the calorie laden, yet delicious moon cakes. Mmmm… tasty, but probably not so healthy… not sure what it’s going to do to my practice! Actually, I’ve never really thought of how food affects my practice… Oh well, I’m going to continue to indulge in moon cake while it’s available (it’s only availabe around Moon cake festival).

And yet another indulgence, a new art-piece from TheBroth. I wasn’t going to include it as it wasn’t really “Yoga Art” but then I thought, hey, it’s a self portrait of sorts (Talk about not letting go of the ego… very un-yogic but hey.) and I do yoga… good enough!

Ok, that’s a blatant lie. Well, maybe not blatant and maybe not a complete lie, depending on how you look at it. Truth is, I’ve been busy at TheBroth again, busy making yet another artwork inspired by yoga.

One week of tile dragging resulted in something that looks like kapotanasana. Not a bad effort I thought, there’s lots I don’t like as usual, but in the end I just wanted it to end. The inspiration for making kapotanasana came from a certain yogini who’s going through some pretty tough times at the moment. My heart just breaks every time I read about her struggle, so she’s been on my mind and in my heart lately.

You can tell I like backbendy stuff. I reckon they’re pretty to look at, even though some of the non-yogis around me just cringe and tell me they feel sick when they see some extreme backbends. Funny, I think I use to be like that, now I’m like, “wha..?”

I went to class for practiced today. All throughout practice I kept thinking about the hip and the back. I didn’t open up into urdhva mukha svanasana as much as usual, I was afraid of putting too much pressure on the lower back. I was really working the core muscles to protect the back as much as possible. The hip feels surprisingly good though and I can even sit in half lotus (left leg of course) with no pain. Even so, I didn’t want to push my luck in practice so I’m continuing to leave out the lotus and half lotus poses.

Bhujapidasana is feeling stronger with every practice. I feel like I have more control getting into and out of it. Upavishta konasana is now consistently a chest-to-ground affair. I feel as if my body is ready for a new pose, but this may not be a wise move for someone practicing with some pretty serious injuries. I’m reminded of Sweaty Brain’s t-shirt, “New pose please? … Just kidding”.

I went up with straight legs in shirshasana. I didn’t even need help to keep balanced. That was pretty cool. I don’t know how straight I was, but I felt pretty straight. Held shirshasana for 20 breaths, I could’ve pushed for 25, but that would go against my recently found “no-pushing” frame of mind. I wobbled a little, Tiff’s advice about using more bandhas really helped today.

To me, eka pada viparita dandasana is one of the prettiest asanas out of all of the Ashtanga series’. I thought I’d make an artwork at TheBroth for this yoga pose. Actually, more accurately, I decided to make an artwork of some yoga pose from the Ashtanga series and decided that eka pada viparita dandasana was the prettiest one I could make.

Well, 1000 tiles and about 2.5 hours later (I think, I didn’t really time myself) here we have it, my eka pada viparita dandasana artwork.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I’m not very creative or artistic, so I’m pretty happy with the way this turned out.

Here’s a list of the 7 things I don’t like so much about my artwork, but couldn’t be arsed spending another 2 hours fixing:

• My poor model has chunky thights in proportion to her very slender body
• She’s boob-less (kind of like me!)
• I ran out of vertical space! Hence her leg up in the air is out of proportion
• She has tankles (ie tank-ankles)
• She has no fingers or hands!
• Her grounded foot is more like a blob than a foot
• She’s off center, just a little

And now for the 7 things I like.

• The shading on her legs are good
• Her head turned out better than I thought, I was very scared about making her head
• Her calves are well shaped
• Her skin tone is quite lovely
• The bend in her very bendy back looks… just right bendy
• Her bun hair style turned out better than expected
• And last but not least: She’s got a great ass

Hmm… wonder if I’ll ever get to try this pose. One can dream!

Still feeling pretty crap. Still not sure if I’m going to practice today, I have 2 hours to decide.

I’m now not sure if I’m going to get fully sick, or I’m just suffering from some extreme stress. I’m mostly grumpy and irritable.

I can’t breathe out of my nose comfortably, that’s one reason I don’t want to go to class to practice. I could practice at home I suppose, even though I still don’t have my mat with me. I know it’ll be good for me, it’ll help with the stress at the very least. Maybe it’ll help my back too, it’s been feeling stiff and sore lately.

I’m trying to talk myself into practicing… unsuccessfully I might add. Times like these, the non-attachment thing is easy.

In the mean time, I spent the 1.5 hours I should have been practicing creating this:

I surprised myself with this little piece of artwork. I poured every single drop of creativity in my body into this and I’m not a creative person. Just goes to show what a little determination can achieve.

This is a way off topic post, but I thought the artwork was too cute to let it slip by.

It’s a snapshot from TheBroth.com. I’ve written a little about them in a previous post, but to recap, it’s a collaborative art project where you drag little square tiles around a “canvas” to make a digital artwork. The object being to make artworks with a team of people who are in the same room working on the same “canvas”. Pretty neat concept and really fun when you get a nice group of people who help each other out.

Anyway, I was browsing the gallery and found this little cow and fell in love with him. Unlike the last snapshot I wrote about, I had no hand in creating this artwork, I just liked it and wanted to share it.

If I was a vegetarian, I would wear it on a t-shirt… what the heck, I’d wear it on a t-shirt regardless… he’s just too adorable! I mean, just look at his cute, little, pink udder… aww!

I should keep things on topic but I can’t contain myself. I guess going off topic once in a while isn’t too bad.

I’ve been spending some time at a web site called TheBroth. It’s a collaborative art project for the most part, but you get some immature people in there who just destroy and ruin your work. Even with these brats, the concept of the site is very cool.

Anyway, so I was browsing the gallery there and came across this snapshot of a bonsai tree. I thought it was really well done, except for the messy vertical borders and the fact that the picture wasn’t balanced.

So I signed up for an account and created my own room with that bonsai tree snapshot and I had hoped I could do something to it to polish off the picture. I decided to add the chinese characters for “peace”, thinking it would use up all of the tiles that made the vertical border. Well, that didn’t happen, so I ended up “hiding” the extra tile pieces under a light coloured tile.

One coffee and two hours of tile dragging later, the result is this:

I’m pretty proud of the way it turned out. Even though I didn’t create the bonsai itself, I think I polished it up good. I might even get it printed on a shirt!