Ramaswami suggested a second, evening, practice for the serious yoga student, were on a teacher training course after all. He recommended a short, perhaps vigorous, asana practice, an opportunity to work on difficult postures or some of the subroutines we might not generally cover in our regular morning practice. The asana would be followed by Pranayama and Meditation. On the course, as I've mentioned before, we would have a late afternoon session where we would have the freedom to practice whatever asana we wished for fifteen twenty minutes before practicing pranayama for forty minutes and meditation for another twenty to forty, building up as the course went on. I took the opportunity to explore a vigorous arm balance practice one day, a relaxed inversion practice another, each day trying something different to see how it affected my meditation.
I seem to be quite settled in my morning Vinyasa Krama influenced Ashtanga practice at the moment but my evening practice has slipped a little. I used to get on the mat/cushion five to six evening s a week but that's slipped to three to four the last month, something I want to remedy.
When I have managed to get on the mat in the evenings I seem to have got into the habit of coming up with a short vinyasa krama subroutine that preparers me for and then explores a tricky posture that I'm keen to work on. It might be some extra work around Hanumanasana/Eka pada raja kapotasana/Natajarasana or a seated sequence of hip openers that leads into my work on kandasana, perhaps an asymmetric subroutine that leads into one of the fancy arm balances Pungu Kukkutasana, Parsva dandasana or yesterdays Omkarasana.
It doesn't really matter which, it's just asana, the tricky pose is the carrot that entices you onto the mat, it's a light, fun, dare I say playful practice.
Yesterday then was my first look at Omkarasana. Looking at Sweeney it's the last posture in Advanced B but I can't find it anywhere on the David Williams poster and it doesn't appear in Ramaswami's book at all. It's not actually that hard ( Shhhh) if you have your 2nd series leg behind head poses down and the chakrasana exit then I think you could probably do it. The arms need to be a little closer together than usual ( that's the tricky bit, especially when exiting) so you can hook your toe on your arm. I'm sure as you work at it a little the lower leg will get a little further up the arm.
The practice was basically,
A couple of Sury's A and B
Ardha badha Padmottanasana
Maha mudra then forward bending into janu Sirsasana A
Ardha badha padmottanasana followed by some VK twists based on the pose
Arkana dandasana A and B
Eka pada sirsasana
Omkrasana
Badha konasana/Kandasana
Check out the video, still rough but perhaps you can see what I mean when I say it's a delightfully playful pose.
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5 comments:
Thanks for suggesting a 2nd afternoon class practicing poses that are challenging. Thanks to you I have started doing poses from Primary Series that are challenging for me in the afternoon. This helps tremendously and during this practice I do some of the standing breath techniques and a few stomach kriyas. Your posts are appreciated. An Ashtanga studio is far away so I have my practice and the DVDs from David Swenson and Sherath Jois. When some of the certified Ashtanga Yoga people have workshops in the Southeast USA, I may attend occasionally. I have the Complete Syllabus demonstrated by David Williams and appreciate the evolution of Ashtanga and its history too.
It's a good way to work the tricky postures from whatever series. i kind of used to do it before, work on dropbacks or kapo or karandavasana say in the evening, kind of like a mini workshop. This is much better though, turning it into a mini practice and integrating it with the pranayama and meditation, makes so much more sense. good luck with it Quentin.
Oh yeah, I was gonna say, as soon as I saw the picture, that is not hard! ha ha ha, OK I am being sarcastic, slap in the wrist me!, I wish I had all of second, would be trying...
How fun that the course had the evening practice with some free poses, lately in my home practice I have been feeling like doing just that, sometimes my body even takes over and starts doing asanas which I also do not find in posters.... interesting
i recently found your site. i just want to thank you for such an inspiring website. i've been practicing for about a year and i hope to progress as deeply some day as you. thank you.
and, thank you for not making your site some commercialized monstrosity like so many other blogs!
hi Claudia. just saying it's not SO hard if your can already do the LBH in 2nd as opposed to a couple of the other Advanced series poses i've been looking at recently. Punga kukkutasana and Parsva dandasana, say, those are much trickier, Oh and kandasana which is bloomin' hard.
Thank you Anon and for noticing the lack of advertising, I feel the same way about it. I've reviewed a few things I actually use, mat's, clothing etc as well as some books and DVD's that I'm fond of but get irritated by the links to amazon on every post or some other product. I remember on the TT course I took the business yoga guy suggested we write posts connected to stories in the news to get more hits and raise the profile, was quite disgusted by that too.
I did get $1 from adaware last year, think I have a link somewhere on here which you can click if you'd actually like to see some advertising that supposedly relates to the blog.
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