But can you bend into the shape of a pretzel yet?

(Note: After I finish this post, I'm going to change into my yoga togs for yoga practice #360.  Eeek!!!!)

A continuation of my reflections on some of the questions I asked upon beginning this 360 straight days of yoga practice.  I asked, will I:

• Master more challenging poses that we do once in awhile in yoga class and then don't return to again for several months, so that I never really feel like I've fully learned how to properly execute them? Poses like Bakasana? 

I did Bakasana in my home practice yesterday.  It is one of those poses that sometimes feels like second nature to get into. Then on other days, I feel totally befuddled about where to place my knees against my arms--it just feels not quite right, even if I'm placing the knees in the exact same place as I did the day before, when it felt easier than pie.

Anyway, I do feel like I am more capable and skilled with Bakasana, in general.  Some of the other challenge poses I've worked on in class and at home this year, however, I am a long, long way from comfortable.  Perhaps you remember this one:

Ah, good ole Eka Pada Galavasana... I quit working on this one because I was sick of looking like a battered woman.  The pressure of my foot against my arm gave me bruises that looked like someone had grabbed me really hard.  It wasn't such a big deal when the weather was cool outside, but when tank top weather arrived....  Also, my leg injury sort of put a hamper on this one.  Take-Away Lesson: You can't be Super Woman when you walk with a hobble.

• (Will I) Get my hamstrings to finally open up enough to straighten my legs all the way in Uttanasana or to touch my heels to the ground in Downward-Facing Dog?

My heels still do not touch the ground in Downward-Facing Dog.  Honestly, I never for a second thought they would.  That said, after warming up a little, they definitely get much CLOSER to the ground in Dog pose than they were a year ago.  On the other hand, once warmed up, I really can straighten my legs all the way in Uttanasana now.  I don't choose to very often, because I don't want to lock my knees, but I can do it. For whatever that's worth.

• Stand on one leg with my other foot up by my head without tipping over?

Why yes, I kind of can do this now.  Look!

Utthita Hasta Padangustasana

My foot is kind of by my head, right?  I can't hold this forever, I can't straighten my leg all the way, and the pose has room for lots of improvement in terms of alignment and grace, BUT I can hold it without tipping over.  Sometimes.

*     *     *

Overall, certain poses are easier now than last January, but my body resists other poses and movements just as much as it always has.  And there are probably poses that are harder for me now than they were a year ago, because of an injury this year or maybe I just haven't been practicing it for awhile.  

-Some poses that are easier: Uttanasana, Bakasana, Baddha Utthita Parsvakonasana, Utthita Hasta Padangustasana, Plank and Chaturanga Dandasana. (I used to HATE these last two poses.  Now I like them. A lot.) Oh and can't forget Ardha Chandrasana--I'm especially proud of my work with Half Moon, a perpetually difficult, painful pose for me!

-Some poses are more difficult now than a year ago: Utkatasana (this one is a be-otch when you haven't been practicing it much), Malasana a.k.a. squat-asana, pigeon pose, Eye of the Needle pose.  I used to LOVE Eye of the Needle, but it causes me a lot of pain on my right side at present, and my motion is quite limited.  

I wonder which of these poses will be easier or more challenging for me at the end of 2011.  The truth of the matter is: Yoga is a process.  There is no grand finale. Everyday presents different obstacles to match the body's capabilities in that moment on the mat.  Yesterday, Bakasana was easy for me.  It might not be easy when I do it today.  Mastery is not holding a pose perfectly day after day.  Mastery is the act of showing up on the mat,  attempting a pose to the best of one's abilities in that moment, and returning the next day to try again.

So many different ways one can bend a pretzel on any given day!

And now, I'm off to find out how my body wants to bend on this, my 360th straight day of yoga practice.  More later!  Namaste!

90 days, suckers!

As of Monday night, I have done yoga every single day for 90 days.  90 days of practicing yoga for at least 30 minutes.  I’ve done Adho Mukha Svanasana every single day for 90 days.  9-0.

I don’t know if I’ve ever committed myself to practicing anything for 90 straight days before, unless I count the basic actions of being alive (breathing, eating, sleeping) or certain hygiene musts, like brushing my teeth.  Commitment is the operative word here; it is entirely possible that I’ve drunk coffee for 90 straight days at some point in my life, but I’ve never made an intentional commitment to do so.  Of course, I haven’t committed to practice yoga for 90 straight days—I’ve committed to practice yoga for 360 straight days.  The 90-day mark signifies that I’m a quarter of the way to my goal.  I’ve still got 270 days of yoga to come.

This got me to thinking about how much time I’m spending on the mat.  I’m away from my special yoga minutes tracking calendar right now.  But, by looking at the calendar at my office, I can note which days I attended yoga classes versus days when I practiced at home to come up with a rough estimate of the minimum amount of time I’ve spent doing yoga in the last 90 days:

-I’ve attended a yoga class on 35 of the past 90 days, spending ~2760 minutes total in those classes. 

-I’ve practiced yoga at home for 55 of the past 90 days for at least 30 minutes each day, so I’ve spent AT LEAST 1650 minutes total practicing at home.  (Given how many 45-minute practices I’ve done, I would guess that 2000 minutes would be closer to the truth.)

-So, I’ve spent AT LEAST 4410 minutes practicing yoga in the last 90 days.

Let me attempt to put this into perspective.  If I sleep eight hours (480 minutes) a night, I’ve spent over nine days worth of sleep doing yoga.  There are 1440 minutes in a day, so I’ve done more than the equivalent of three full days in yoga practice.  However, I’m still 5670 minutes shy of a full week’s worth of yoga.  If I only do 30 minutes of yoga for the next 270 days, I’ll have spent 12,510 minutes doing yoga by the end of my 360 days on New Years Eve, which is about 8-2/3 days worth.  In contrast, if I’ve slept 8 hours every night for the past 90 days and continue to do so for the next 270 days, I’ll end the year with 172,800 minutes of sleep.  With 518,400 minutes in a year, 33% of those would be spent asleep compared to a measly 2.4% spent doing yoga. 

All these calculations start to make me feel like the 90-day mark is hardly worth patting myself on the back over!  Still, it is a significant mile marker in my yoga 360 and I’m proud to have reached it.

For my 90^th day of yoga, I went to my Monday night class with Denise Benitez at Seattle Yoga Arts.  I could go on for quite some time, singing the praises of Denise and Seattle Yoga Arts, but I’ll save it for another post.  But I will say that for every 8-week session at SYA, Denise chooses a challenge pose for the class to work on.  These poses are, indeed, challenging.  Luckily, most of the challenge poses have had lots of adaptations with props to accommodate the tight-hamstringed or balance challenged, etc.  During this eight-week session, we’re doing an arm balance called Eka Pada Galavasana.  It looks like this:

Doesn’t it look impossible?!

I certainly thought so the first time we tried this pose in March.  But now, I think that if I continue to practice it, I might actually be able to do it in the foreseeable future.  Working on the pose in class and in my home practice, I’ve had some success briefly balancing with my back leg bent in.  I need to work on balancing for longer now, and start experimenting with extending that back leg.  This will challenge my balance even more, and it will take TONS of core strength.  But the possibility of executing this difficult pose is very real. 

I don’t know that I would have felt this possibility if we’d pursued this pose last fall.  I really feel like that by attempting it on my mat at home, in addition to on Monday nights, I’ve come to view the pose as more accessible.  The more I attempt to do something that seems impossible, the less impossible it seems.  

This is what I’m taking away from my first 90 days—if I regard something as being very difficult or impossible to do, I can choose to continue to shy away from that challenge (thus it will always be very difficult or impossible) or I can step past my fear of failure and try it, and then try it again.  My attempts may result in many failures, but each time I fail, I learn something and eventually, that learning may translate into a success, which feels wonderful!  In the next 90 days, I would like to take this understanding beyond the mat and apply it to other daunting challenges in my life—an undertaking which I suspect will make 90 straight days of yoga look like a walk in the park!

Namaste!