Day 164/21

[Nairam]

It’s getting cold–and it’s hard to go to practice early in the morning. Let alone getting out of the house–getting out of bed one one can feel that it’s dark, damp and freezing outside is really difficult for me.

Anyway, I pushed myself out of bed this morning and went to the shala. I knew I’d better go, since yesterday I ran about 3 miles in the evening and while I got some stretching at the end, the yoga practice in the morning was needed to avoid getting stiff–particularly since I couldn’t practice yesterday morning (I had to go and renew some official papers very early in the morning). Not only that, but lately I’m feeling a little bit more stressed out than in the past couple of months, and the daily practice keeps me grounded.

It was a good day, so to speak. I felt a little stiff in the forward bends, but nothing that could avoid me from reaching my normal extreme points in each position. The only not so good (but perhaps expected) moment was when D was giving me an adjustment in Prasaritta C and at some point he went “and now you can pretend you can breathe”. Phew. OK, I know I suck at breathing, though, believe me, I’m trying. I’ve just always been a really shallow breather (which, incidentally, causes me grief with exercise more generally). I should be getting better with the yoga practice, and certainly there are a (growing) number of poses in which I seem to be able to hold while breathing relatively deeply/long. But there are also many poses for which the breathing becomes short and shallow if I’m not hyper-focused (which I know is the point, but obviously I have not achieved yet).

Anyway, just a reminder that I need to work on that (as if I didn’t know…)