Day 16 - 43, Practice 34

Dec 17 - Jan 10

Practicing 6 days a week (4 days mysore style, 1 day led, 1 day self-practice) has become comfortable after crossing the 30 day mark.

I had made an effort to chronicle my daily mysore practice reflections, known as "mysore notes" on Instastory. I like how these "notes" disappear after 24 hours, just like how the previous day's practice recede away with time, making way for the next one. So, if you end up writing a whiny or an angst-filled one, you get away with it.

One highlight phase of my practice happened in early December, where it lasted for 22 days straight. I was up for 18 - 20 hrs a day, from 5.30 am to almost 1 am, due to an event I was organizing and working for, on top of my 9.30 am day job. It was one crazy period where I slept only for 4 - 5 hours a day and managed to follow through with mysore practice 4 - 5 days a week without missing a day at the studio.

In the first few weeks, I clearly recalled experiencing physical burn out, adjusting to the demands of daily mysore practice that my body had yet to get used to. I had no idea when and if things would even get better then.

In the last few practices, I had a newfound level of energy that took me not only through my entire practice with ample reserve, but also throughout my day, as I felt the difference physically, mentally and energetically, in contrast to the beginning when I started the program. I am still doing about 5 hours of sleep on average per day and that felt like a sweet spot for me as sleeping in excess of that often made me feel worse!

Another milestone was embarking on intermediate series, pasasana, which my teacher gave me about a week ago. During this period, I was fighting very hard to get back to where I was, 6 - 7 months ago in my practice. I've practiced Ashtanga yoga 3 years ago when I started yoga, but I was never really doing it on such a regular, consistent and focused basis -- I had been practicing very regularly for almost a year in 2015, going for other hatha, vinyasa yoga and hot classes 2-3 days on weekdays and 5 or 6 classes on weekends that was totally detoxing every cell inside of me that built me up physically, but for Ashtanga yoga, admittedly, I never did practice it for more than 2 months straight, religiously, less the self-practices at home that came and went (which could never compare to the intensity and focusedness of mysore practice at the studio under supervision and guidance of a teacher, so reaching this stage is indeed considered new to me.

I have been attending led classes in recent 2 weeks, where teacher would take us up to kapotasana, speaking of which, I am really not used to the pace of it -- my regular mysore practice would take me about 100 - 110 mins to complete (throw in 6 - 8 breaths per pose, twice or thrice in one or two postures that I felt I needed more work on, 6 - 7 urdhva danurasanas with 8-10 dropbacks), in contrast to the primary - intermediate led class which would last for 120 mins, where I would be spent physically, and especially more so with the new postures that ultilized new and different neuromuscular pathways which made me feel totally like a fish out of water.

Till 24 hrs later.