Back on the mat

I had hoped to do Primary series this morning. I'd managed to practice Vinyasa Krama most of last week, up until the tooth abscess came up but had only managed one Primary and one Intermediate last Sunday and Monday.

First Sury Namaskara and I realized it was a bad idea, the tooth doesn't seem to like having my head down, blood pumps, tooth throbs (well obviously not the tooth) and while I could probably get used to the pain/uncomfortableness I suspected it wasn't good for the healing process.

Nice reminder from CK in comments to the last post that we can, of course, do japa (mantra meditation) in any position. So pranayama and japa then, a few postures to open up the hips though to see if I could comfortable settle in lotus.

I started with the tadasana sequence missing out the forward bends but adding some more balancing postures, paschimottanasana will have much the same effect as Uttansana without getting my head below my heart. When it came to paschi though I found my hamstrings very tight, shows how important those forward bends are as preparation for the long paschi's we do in VK. I shifted to a long stay in maha mudra, five minutes each side and then some half lotus forward bends and twists before giving paschi another try, this time it was fine and I stayed for five minutes. I'd decided to steer clear of headstands for a while but wanted to see how Shoulderstands felt, did the prep, went up and it seemed OK, kept it short so as not to push my luck.

And that was asana practice, about forty minutes in the end, slipped into padmasana and did twenty minutes or so of pranayama and another twenty of japa and jana meditation, oh and some chanting too. Perhaps On Tuesday (day off) in lieu of my big practice I'll chant the sutras, still have the recording from when we chanted them together on the course.