Day 9 - 15: Mysore at Pure Yoga Week 2

3 Dec - 9 Dec

My practices continued at Pure Yoga for a second week. There were 1 or 2 days where I had overslept and was almost late for my Grabhitch, but thankfully, I managed to make it to the studio on all occasions.

Waking up and making it to the studio are 2 things you need to take care of, if you want a consistent practice. The rest depends on 3 things: you, your teacher and how much you know (so you know how to intelligently do the work on the mat).

I worked on the major gatekeeper postures such as Marichyasana D, Bhujapidasana, Kurmasana, Supta Kurmasana. I would repeat them at least twice during my practice but I was worried that I may be caught under the teacher's radar for the wrong reasons in terms of how would I be interpreted from this self-check attitude that can be read as self-obsessed. Backbends were brought to a more (subjectively) extreme degree; I'd do 6-9 Urdhva Dhanurasana and 5-10 dropbacks depending on how I was that day, but the number generally grew as the days passed.

Twice, I got comments about the number of dropbacks I was doing. Once, the student beside me asked, "how many dropbacks are you going to do, huh?" Then, there was an assisting student who walked past me and asked, "you wanna do a few more?" I felt that although I may have been familiarizing with the steps with the dropping back phase, my legs are getting stronger, my dropbacks haven't not improved.

I yearn the times where I feel light and strong, the days where my jump back and jump throughts were clean. My stamina has dropped and I'd always be catching a few more breaths before continuing with the next vinyasa...

I'm at the stage where I'm still trying to fine tune my diet, energy, sleep and everything in the Ashtanga yoga puzzle. It seems difficult getting back to the same state even though I am doing the same things...

I practiced 5 days this week and considering I will be working on weekends till 11pm, making my total hours awake to 18 - 20 hours, I think I will give Sunday a rest although I hope I a good home practice awaits me.