My practice has started to rapidly improve. The better it gets, the less I feel like writing, which is why I've been slacking my butt off on my blog this week! Sorry, friends, I'll do better on the last week of my challenge for sure!
The most notable changes have been in compression postures, which leads me to believe I'm gaining flexibility and losing bulk in my stomach & chest. I have gotten incredibly close to touching my face to my legs in hands to feet pose. I can consistently touch my forehead to my (bent) knee in standing separate leg head to knee pose. On occasion, I'm able to push my knee back and keep my head to my knee, but I'm still struggling with that part. In similar news, I almost screamed with joy yesterday when I felt my eyebrows brush my knees in rabbit! I haven't really been too close in the past, but with a focus on pulling my stomach in and rounding my spine, I've gotten there. I've also gotten consistent on touching my forehead to knee in head to knee with stretching on the floor. The left leg can almost always lock, the right can sometimes.
Moral of the story: the more I practice, the more I improve. This seems like such a "duh" concept, but it's a breakthrough for me. It really helps me on the days where I feel dizzy or weak or just have a shitty attitude. One of the things that helps me to go daily is to not think too deeply about the process of the postures before class. All I need to do is remind myself that no matter how much I struggle, class will eventually come to an end. I just need to get to class and the rest takes care of itself.
The challenge is so close to being over (one week from today is day 60, if you can believe that) and I'm starting to get a little nervous about what happens after that. It's become routine to go daily, but I definitely feel like a day or two off a week would very much help restore some balance to my life. I've been neglecting certain aspects of life, notably my crafting. I have a craft fair coming up in November that I need to get a lot more work done for, and while I don't want to neglect my practice, it's very important that I'm prepared and set for the two-day fair. So I think in my post-challenge world, it's all about instilling balance into my routine. I need to continue practicing, but do it in a way that doesn't interfere with things I need to do and enjoy doing.
Backstory: I lost a lot of weight before my senior year of college and felt awesome and looked the best I'd ever looked. At the height of my weight gain, I looked wistfully back on these days, wishing I could get back there somehow. Well, I tried on my smallest size jeans from that era and THEY FIT. Okay, maybe "fit" is a loose term for it, but I can put them on and zip them up. They're tight as though vacuum-sealed on my body, but in a few more pounds, they'll be comfortable. Weirdly enough, I'm still probably 15-20 pounds heavier than I was in college, but my body is much shapelier than it was at that time. Yoga changes and heals all, apparently.
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