First intermediate series in a month

The dreamlike dropback from yesterday's post eluded me this morning. I thought I could still feel them in my body, when I got up, perhaps I should have started with backbends while they were still fresh but by the time I got around to them, at the end of my practice, they had faded away. I made the mistake too of practicing Intermediate instead of Primary, should have kept everything as much the same as possible, oh and I practiced late morning. Now of course the hint of something special has passed and I feel my regular backbends in my body, so no clues. Still, perhaps it'll come back when I least expect it.

But I practiced 2nd series, first time in a month and for only the tenth time in the last three. In fact I checked my practice diary and I've only practiced primary twenty times in the last three months. I've been practicing Vinyasa krama almost everyday but my Ashtanga practice has been decimated. I'd hoped to keep it up in the evenings but I would often end up running late and considered pranayama and meditation more important. I'd end up doing a short VK sequence or two. Susan's right, as ever, hard to keep an Ashtanga practice up in the evenings.

Convinced of the benefits of the detox aspect, I want to rebuild my Ashtanga practice in the mornings and shift Vinyasa krama, pranayama and meditation to after work. I'll still keep some VK aspects in the morning, start with tadasana sequence, long paschimattanasana, Shoulderstands and headstands as well as finishing with kapalabhati, and a little pranayama and japa meditation. It'll free me to practice some different VK subroutines in the evening too, perhaps fifteen minutes of asana.

So first Intermediate in a month, I was surprised Kapo was still pretty much there, managed to grab my heels but had to work for it and couldn't grab them from the air. Actually the video is the second in a month, I did it once, caught my toes and decided to film the next one as I already had the camera set up to try and capture the mythical dropback. My knees are too far apart but I liked the coming back up from kapo B, quads are strong from the VK squats.

I filmed Karandavasana too. I didn't think I'd be able to get it back up and wanted to watch where I was showing weakness. As it happened I lowered it OK, although a little fast at the end, and managed to raise it inch by inch, thought I wasn't going to make it at one point and would have to bail but it got there. All squished again, had just started to reduce that although my chin was just off the mat. The exit from such a squished position is clumsy, but I'll take it.

Rest of 2nd was OK, krounchasana seems to have improved, probably from all the long forward bends I do in VK. Leg behind heads poses again fine, if anything deeper no doubt from my work on wide angle pose and baddha konasana. I missed out the headstands as I still have three stitches in the top of my head but the seven deadlies are usually fine especially as I do those long long headstands in VK.

I'm thinking a month of four Primarys, two Intermediates to rebuild the discipline and then switch it back the other way around in the new year to properly bring 2nd series up to scratch. thinking of attending some workshops next year too and perhaps the odd Sunday visit to a shala to work on tidying everything up.