Primary to Kapo UPDATED inc. tictac Day 12

Remembered we're off to Athens Thursday for a long weekend, decided to skip the rest day yesterday and practice after all, might not have the room for Ashtanga in the hotel. Actually I'm looking forward to some nice Vinyasa Krama practice while I'm away.

So Friday was the end of the 'led Primary with Sharath for a month' project. The idea has been to tighten up my Ashtanga practice after all the modifications and tweaking I've been doing for the last year, take it back to basics as it were.

It's been good, quite easy getting on the mat every morning and if I've been running a little late I've used his speedy primary DVD, mostly though, it's been last month's Stream from Joisyoga which runs around an hour and a half.

I certainly feel fitter and stronger ( M says I look beefier) and there does seem to be that detox factor that I miss in Vinyasa Krama, but perhaps that's nothing other than sweating buckets for an hour.

Much less flexible though (perhaps the beefiness). I tend to practice a wider range of asana in Vinyasa Krama and stay much longer in postures, really working into them. Of course I've been doing  led, practicing at your own pace you can slow it down a bit but too much and you lose that rhythm, it's a compromise.

I've been keeping up my pranayama practice in the morning too so don't mind sacrificing the long inhalation and exhalations so much but if I didn't have that....

My evening Vinyasa Krama practice has been a bit taken over by the tictac work too but only a couple more days of that and I can get back to a better balance.

My practice is tighter, my ashtanga's more flowing, got the rhythm back, the project has done it's job.

So why not take it a little further. Yesterday I added on 2nd series to Kapo, thought I'd do the for a couple of weeks then go up to karandavasana before splitting at the end of the month and doing a month of led 2nd, tighten that series up too.

I have the Jois led primary and 2nd series from Yogaworks and have spliced the appropriate sections from 2nd into the Primary making  Jois led Primary to Kapo and Primary to Karanda video's to practice with.

Practicing up to kapo yesterday was fine, primary works as a nice warm up and the backbend work is a joy after all the forward bending. It's only an extra ten- fifteen minutes, hardly feel it on a led practice where your going at a faster rate than normal.

My kapo was off though, first one in a month and I could only just grab my toes, despite all the backbending work in tictac's. Coming up from laghu was a strain too, managed it but only just but that will all come back. Wonder if I can still come up from Karandavasana, might have a lame duck.

Dropbacks were nice after the bit of 2nd, especially liked the first one of the video below.



Anyway it's just gone 7am time for practice.

UPDATE

At the last minute I decided to a normal practice IE. not led, sans video. Nice practice, Primary - Kapo came out at a smidgin under two hours from first Sury to laying down in savasana and included a couple of tictac attempts ( video to come on that but pretty much the same as yesterday). Nice chanting the sanskrit count in my head whenever my mind would wander from the breath, good way to refocus.

Thinking I might practice solo for a month, two weeks up to Kapo followed by another two up to Karandavasana and then switch to led Intermediate for a month.

Tictac day 12

Pretty much the same as day 11, almost caught it but just failed to get the head and shoulders through, back to the sofa perhaps to 'fix' the motion.