Outside Practice

I have been attending the Yoga Technique classes on Monday's with Laurie and I feel like I am starting to gain some strength in my upper arms! I have tested this by finally being able to do a chataranga ( I know I butchered the spelling pretty bad) without struggling for once. I am really happy about this! Plus I think I finally understand how to do them correctly instead of just flopping on the ground. When I left this class I was feeling really good, my arthritis wasn't bothering me and everything felt really great. The breath work that we were using that day also made me feel really great while moving into postures. We would inhale and then pause at the top of the inhale and then exhale kind of like a yawn with no control. The next day however, my legs were a little sore because I hadn't worked those muslces like that in a while!

Hatha Yoga

In class today we did a few asanas from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. According to these texts it is supposed to lead to spiritual evolution if it is practiced everyday for 12 years. Some of these postures were difficult and when they were described it was difficult to picture how they were supposed to be performed. I found it quite odd that this particular kind of yoga can bring certain powers and improper practice can lead to the misuse of these powers. Overall, I dont really know what to think about this type of yoga but Im sure if I look more into I could make some sense of it.

Viniyoga Practice

We did a Viniyoga practice in class with Laurie. This practice was focused on head, neck , back and shoulders. When I went into the class that day I had slept wrong the night before on my neck and doing this practice help loosen the tension that I had. This practice also had a lot of cobras in it and by the end of it my triceps were feeling a bit like jello because I dont normally get to work that muscle group very often! I did really like the pace that Laurie set the class at she said it was more of an intermediate pace because of the way we controlled our breath during the postures. We used a count of inhale for 5 and exhale for 5 seconds. I liked the way that this type of breathing felt, I felt very controlled and felt like I was more aware of the way the each posture felt.