A few weeks ago I threatened to start Rodney Yee’s 8-week Home Yoga Practice program from his book, Moving Towards Balance: 8-Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee and blog about my experience. Today, I’m making good on my threat. It’s Day One of Week One.
Today’s practice involved practicing multiple versions of some standing poses. Already, I’m kind of frustrated. After twenty-years of practice, I like doing these poses the way I like doing these poses. So, today, I met the beast of attachment head on and I did the poses the way Rodney wanted me to. I’m still going to keep doing the poses my way, but once I got over my attachment issues, I did find that doing the poses in the variety of ways that the practice suggested, I was able to find different sensation in the poses. It was really an invitation to feel the poses in a variety of different ways and this brought me into deeper awareness of sensation in my body and the alignment and use of my skeletal system.
I also discovered that I am weak. Seriously W-E-A-K. For each of the asana variations, we were instructed to hold the pose for 30-seconds. I confidently came into Warrior II only to find that my whole body wanted to give in at around five seconds. I have been holding poses for a mindful period of time, but only some poses that are a part of my regular Vajra Yoga practice. Being forced to hold other poses took me out of my strength-zone and I was surprised to find out how weak I felt when holding poses. In all fairness, I have been either pregnant or nursing a baby for the past 19-months and that is bound to exhaust a person and change strength and endurance in some ways and enhance it in others.
Finally, I should divulge that I did this practice in the center of my home’s family room with a sick five-year old sitting on the couch watching Pokemon videos and playing fruit ninja on my iPhone and my 9-month old dumping blocks out of a canvas bag near my head. While in downward facing dog, my 9-month old crawled under me and pinched my boob. Yes, you read this correctly—-she pinched my boob! But, I have to say that I felt a whole lot more open, centered and, if not really relaxed, more prepared to continue with the day than I did before practice. I mention this because so many adults feel that they can’t mke time for yoga because they keep waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect place or the time when they can have some peace and quiet. Yes, ideally you can make your practice about taking some time for yourself, but if you can’t, then just push aside the crumbs and the toys—–roll out the mat over the chaos and make it happen.
Please feel free to join me in my 8-week program with Rodney Yee. You can share your own experience by leaving comments on this blog. It’s OK if you start on a different day or we get out of sync. This is going to be fun!
Posted by Sharon Fennimore Rudyk, the fearless leader of Team Matrika. Are you in Pittsburgh, PA? Join us for a great class at Yoga Matrika in Squirrel Hill.