AWESOME DOUBLE DAY WOO!

Today was definitely my best double yet! Days like this are so gratifying. It's so wonderful to be able to not just complete a double but to feel like you kinda rocked it. Of course, I still have plenty of improvements to make, but it is always nice to feel like you're taking steps towards a better practice.

I took the 10 am as the first leg of my double (my yoga pal Nita was teaching and I LOVE her classes) and I was able to hold it together a lot better in the standing series than I have this week. My backbends are really getting stronger and this improvement is helping in so many postures it's unbelievable. I'm figuring out how to relax into the bend even deeper. It's taken me a while to figure out how to not tense my back up while I'm trying to get a 360 degree angle backward bend but now that I've gotten a taste of it, I'm super excited.

The second part of awkward is getting even better for me. I'm still working on getting up on my toes and balancing but the good news is that my ankles are really starting to open up and strengthen. Normally when I attempt to go on my toes, my weight shoots out to the side of my foot and my ankle goes, for lack of a better term, all wonky. Today I noticed that I was able to go straight up without any of the wobbly ankle. SUCCESS! I still can't bend my knees without my hips shooting out in some crazy way to make me lose my balance but I'm happy with my progress nonetheless.

I'm noticing that I'm able to hold my foot longer in standing head to knee without losing my balance. I think it has to do with the contraction of my stomach muscles and my willful detachment from the uncomfortable sensations that make me want to quit. I don't really know how to explain how to pull away from your senses, mostly because I'm not that great at it yet, but it's almost like you check out of your body and basically tell your brain to refuse to feel the discomfort. I've been having a degree of success with it so I'm going to keep on trucking.

Rabbit is becoming another one of my favorite poses suddenly. I've been consistently getting my head to my knees which I never though I would be able to do with my stomach to boob ratio. Once I lift my hips off my heels, the feeling is really intense and incredible. I feel like I'm full of helium when I release, like I'm about to float away into the ether.

So after the first class, Nita and I went to Spiral Diner for a healthy vegan lunch and it was delicious. Spiral is my favorite restaurant in Dallas and since Nita's from Vegas, I wanted to show her some of the cooler haunts here. She remarked that the food was really flavorful, and boy howdy, is it! We had a really nice time, chatting about our lives and, of course, our practices. She's a very cool person and I'm glad to have met her.

After lunch, I kind of wasn't feeling going back to class but there was no way I was going to bail on my yoga date! I think making plans with people to do healthy things is a really great way to make you follow through on them and not quit on yourself. This probably means I need to work on my own determination but it's a long journey! Really, the hardest part of a double is getting out the door to go to the second class.

The second class, the 5pm, was fantaaastic. My muscles were loose from having practiced a few hours earlier and I was much more in touch with my breathing from having worked out a bunch of kinks in the earlier lesson. I was WAY more aligned than I think I've ever been, partially from having been to class once before and partially because of my increased focus on my alignment. It was nice to not have to struggle with my hips/ankles as much as normal and I think I made some really great changes to my body in this class.

I had a really good time with both standing and floor bow in this class and I'm thinking that it had to have something to do with my uber-warm spine. In standing bow, I was really pushing my arm/shoulder towards the mirror while kicking my leg back and I felt much more balanced than I ever have. My leg might not have been as high as it's gotten before but that's not really the point of the posture anyway. My knee was locked, my weight was balanced, my shoulder was to my chin, and I was focused on the spot between my eyebrows. It all just kind of fell into place. On the floor, I kicked my legs back so hard - like, so. incredibly. hard. I almost got a cramp in my back! The release was beyond words. I could have melted into a puddle on the floor.

To make a (very) long story short: Today's double was the best yet and really inspired me to try them out more often. I only had five and a half hours between classes which I thought was going to be hard but I actually think it's a little easier than spacing them out really far. It really is all in your mind! Set your brain to thinking it'll be fun instead of hard and, whaddya know, it'll be fun instead of hard.

Namaste. :)