State of backbends ; UPDATED

Update

Was saying earlier today, before practice (below), that I'd allowed backbends slip recently. It seems that just writing that was enough to get me to focus on them a little more during practice, this, my first ankle grab in Kapo seems to have come from nowhere ( thought it was my first but I came across a photo of one from march 2010). The first one I caught my heels which surprised me enough to interrupt the practice to turn on the camera and catch the ankle grab. Strange how the deep ones come and go.

Earlier

Noticed I haven't posted on backbends in a long time and seeing as it's the beginning of the year, kind of..... sort of, I thought a 'State of the backbend post' might be an idea. Besides, I woke up late, am feeling dopey and need to get some motivation up for practicing 2nd.

So apart from the one post on putting a block between my thighs when dropping back they've taken a backseat, on the blog at least. Why is that I wonder, still doing them everyday. I guess focus just shifts to and from different elements of the practice, this seems to work well actually, you focus on one particular element and everything else ticks along nicely, working itself out.

Recently I've been wrapped up with hip openers while backbends have taken care of themselves.... sort of. Kapo has slipped a little, good days bad days. Haven't landed my hands on my heels from the air in a long time but still manage to land half way up the foot and can work my way up to the heels, at least when the will is strong, some days I just settle for the instep and move on.

Dropbacks have been pretty settled, I'm managing to dropback and come up with the breath nicely now. I used to hold my breath for a moment going back and coming up I would take a sharp intake of breath and it would be a struggle coming up the rest of the way if I didn't make it all the way. Now the breathing is slow and regular, down with the breath up, with the breath, all much more relaxed but perhaps not dropping in as deep. I used to be able to walk in and touch my heels but this is now as close as I get. Oh and I only turn the one foot out now, the left, that's an improvement right?

Uttana Shalabhasana is new though. I still tend to add a couple of extra backbend postures from the Vinyasa Krama Bow series to my Ashtanga 2nd. These tend to be kind of salambhasana prep poses ( see the first couple of minutes of this video) which lead into Viparita Salambhasana and Gandha B before carrying on into the Kapo build up. Recently I started looking at bringing my hands forward in Viparitta Salamabhasana which makes it Uttanha Salabhasana. I'd always been paranoid about flipping over and breaking my neck, bit off putting but it seems OK, feeling relatively controlled at the moment and there's always the wall nearby if I get into trouble, starting to think about grabbing my feet). Cant flip out from this angle due to the length of the room but you get the idea. Starting to think getting the feet or at least toenails to the floor might be possible though getting them to the head seem just as unlikely as ever.Thought I'd worked it out the other week, kind of lowering the feet to the head rather than drawing them in but no luck. Think Boodie, uses Kapo as prep for this whereas I do it the other way around, perhaps I should try her way, this morning maybe.

Wish I had enough room to explore Tick tocks, should get back into flipping out of vipparita dandasana, perhaps when I nail that I wont feel I need as much room for tocking.

OK! Need to practice, been sitting here in thermals trying to warm the body up but if I don't practice soon food will become an issue. Made that mistake last week on my day off. Put off early practice then felt the need for breakfast as I'd planned on practicing Advanced A. That meant I couldn't practice for a couple of hours. I took a hot pre practice bath to warm myself up but that was a bad idea because I just felt weak and flaky, awful, awful practice.

Oh I had my second Mysore dream. I woke up in the night and read on my itouch a tweet about Sharath, who seems to be on the quite the charm offensive and winning everyone over ( good for him, settling into his role perhaps, a tough gig) taking everyone at the Shala for lunch ( 200 ashtangi's supposedly.... there is a quite time in Mysore right? ). Dreamt about that, think Sharath was scattering his grandfather's ashes while everyone watched, strange. Then I woke up again but when I went back to sleep I was dreaming about working late and showed one of the guys I work with a video on my Itouch of the same 'lunch' event, that had by then turned into some kind of fancy dress party, so a Mysore dream within a dream.