6 day a week morning practice..one month in....

I haven't written for ages, but I've learnt so much this past month, so I thought I'd share some of it...

So that morning practice is going really well. I have stuck with the program, bar one morning when I had to swap practice with A&E after a minor car accident and a sore neck. (I think I can excuse myself on that one :) The dedication and knowing that the morning practice is there to be done is really important to me. It's changed my outlook on the way I'm living my life, I have more time in the evenings, decisions about my spare time are easier to make, it gives me focus and I don't find myself beating myself up about not doing practice, I just do. It's working out for me.

Recently I have found my sitting bones.

Hidden beneath my buttocks funnily enough ;)

So in one of my last posts I mentioned aswini mudra, the contraction of the anal sphincter muscles to give a deeper forward bend.. especially in the konasanas. Still working well for me btw. But I've worked out that it's more than just the mudra, its contracting those muscles but at the same time pushing the sitting bones into the floor. Can't believe for the past 4 years I have not been planting them into the earth, seems so simple, I just don't know how I have missed it?!! Guess that's the beauty of ashtanga research. Pressing down on the sitting bones grounds you, activates apana vayu and from there allows you to rise up and out of your pelvis, straightening the spine to its full potential. Feels so good.

Its improved all of my forward seated bends. The konasanas. Ubahya padangusthasana, urdva mukha paschimottanasana. Unbelievable.

But yesterday, REVELATION!

I've been struggling with navasana since I started practicing. 4 years later and I'm still in exactly the same place as I was when I started. How crap is that..? But now I've got all this time to practice I decided to research navasana. See whether there were other postures similar in the series which use the same muscles and try and work out why it is not working for me. So I tried ubahya pandangustasana (with newly found sit bone press and bandha engagement, stayed a breath or two in it to engage the psoas, released the grip, pointed the toes and......OMG it worked! Legs straight, feet a bit more pointing towards the ceiling Kino-style than eye level, but got it, Navasana - DONE!

Can't rave enough about a daily practice. And awareness. And body RESEARCH. It's all about the research! Research on!