“Your thoughts and your actions are fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. I, on the other hand, brought you freedom. Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible. So, fear your captors, your masters. Don’t waste your time and your power fearing me.”
Carlos Castaneda

Tales of Power

Fall 2015 – Back on the Mat

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Though I’ve written extensively about my practice during these past months I did want to note some current observations as part of my focusing for a review of my practices tomorrow with my teacher.

Getting on the mat after being away for over a month was easier and smoother then I remember it in the past. Once I settled back at Bhudeva (after staying with Annelieke in Portugal) … within a couple of days I found myself back on the mat with a fairly fluent practice.

Body

  • Despite the break(s) in the practice there is an established familiarity in my body on the mat.
  • Being away, dealing with un-health and then returning to the mat (numerous times) seems to have refined my relationship to my body and my presence within it.
  • It took my shoulders about a week to soften and expand.
  • It took my hips about two weeks … overall I feel that my hip mobility has improved greatly since I’ve been with this practice (almost two years now).
  • I feel vital, strong and confident in my spine.
  • I feel that my center, abdominal muscles have a deeper quality … I feel both stronger and softer.
  • My neck still has stiffness.

Breath

  • My breath is stronger in asana … it is extended and stable. Asana that once took my breath away do not … I am able to work them with extended breath and deeper exploration.
  • I am once again at ease with BK in asana.
  • I am comfortably settled in my Pranayama practice … having completed the sequence I started with in February
  • Though I feel that the unsteady practice had diminished the quality of my relationship with breath in Pranayama … I am able to hold it … but it doesn’t yet hold me.

Mind

  • Like with Pranayama I feel that the lack of stability had diminishes my sense of stability. Only now, after ~3 weeks of continuous practice I am starting to feel my mind settled as I knwo it can eb (from past experience).
  • The quality of my presence diminishes (relatively) during the day … if I don’t practice in the first part of the day it is difficult for me get on the mat … and if I do it is with a lesser quality of presence.

Sound

  • This is something that has been with me a lot but escaped my previous notes. Before spring allergy set in and opened the disturbed period of summer practice I frequently heard the inner sound I first became acquainted with satmuki mudra. It was with me during my asana practice. It was very much with me in sitting after pranayama. I lost touch with it during this summer … but it has begun to subtly resurface.

 

 

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