Monday, January 16

Yes, it is snowing!  There are some hefty forecasts for the Norther San Juans, but to quote my husband: I'll believe it when I ski it!

We had a great practice yesterday morning, Robyn and Sara joined us and Ally and I each had a breakthrough!  We are working towards tick-tocks, drop-backs and standing up from backbends.  Ally kicked over for the first time and I was able to drop back and stand up in one motion for the first time. Usually I get back in a back bend and my brain goes jumbly and I have to kind of gear up for the stand up but this time I jsut popped right back up.

We had a nice chatty practice, which I really appreciate.  I find that topics naturally arise when you are practicing yoga with a few friends, and as you keep moving there is a nice flow to the exchange of knowledge about yoga poses, philosophy and the practice in general.  Robyn has a nice Ashtanga background and offered some partner assistance and some insight into a few poses and series of poses.  Sara has a Boulder background and a solid Ashtanga and Anusara background.

One of the challenging parts of my yoga practice is that I walk around with the belief that "I don't have enough time to practice."  For whatever reason, I came to the realization on Sunday that I do, in fact, practice a lot.  I have THREE HOURS every Sunday, plus KT's class on Tuesday evening and I manage to squeeze in a few good strong Level I poses when I teach on Thursdays and do demos in class.  We all agreed that with a longer practice like we do on Sundays we get so much more out of it than we would in 3 one-hour classes, because we have the time to take the practice so much deeper.

I was also complaining in my head to myself that all of my outdoor pursuits seem to "undo" everything I am hoping to achieve with my yoga practice, and that may be true to some degree, but when I look around the room and I see us all in the splits, putting our foot on our head, I realize how incredible it is to be able to ski and climb and hike as much as we do, and still maintain this level of flexibility.

Practice, practice, practice.  There is no way around the brutal truth that while there are definite alignment principles that will usher you into poses without injury, the only way you will attain them, ultimately, is by doing them over and over and over again. 

I skied in the afternoon with the family, then had a nice quiet evening at home.  There comes a time in every weekend with the kids when I start to look forward to my time alone with my husband, and that moment came last night.  It's nice to have both.