Towards Viparīta Chakrāsana with David Garrigues Day 7

Second post of the day, you might like to check out this morning's Yoga bloopers post


Context:  David's Viparīta Chakrāsana exercise

Before I get onto this mornings work, day 7, a few thoughts on yesterday.

It had it's ups and downs, two in particular the first a crash and burn where I forgot to keep my arms straight and strong as I went over and the other, my first drop from headstand into Urdhva Dhanurasana.

What was all the fuss about, all the... trepidation, we're getting old, we used to do this all the time, fearlessly,  as kids. And yet it seems such a long way to drop, counter intuitive and are the arms really going to be OK and not break off at the shoulder. And so the working up to it, handstand to the wall, coming over onto a three fold futon and then two fold, one fold and finally to the mat and even then I had three on top of each other.

To be honest is seems quite a natural motion to drop onto the feet, it's not the same as dropping back, in that you have to have enough of a backbend to get your arms down but here your arms are already down and you knees, well they seem to naturally bend so as to land squarely.



This wasn't one of David's exercises but I've been doing the one where you try to push off the futon/pads and was paranoid that while trying to come up off the futons I might drop back miss it and land on the floor, I wanted to make sure I could land on the floor safely.

It's basically there, now I don't have any fear of landing I can work on holding the handstand and lowering the feet closer and closer to my head before dropping, want to try and get the softest landing I can.

Day 7 ( This morning)
All this week I've been trying these exercises in the evening after some light backbend prep, this morning I practiced with the Sharath Primary, originally streamed from Joisyoga, stopped it after the urdhva Dhanurasana's, dropped back three times then gave the drop to the floor another go, to consolidate as it were, or find out if yesterday was a fluke.

Now it's one thing doing this as a, pretty much, stand alone practice, quite something else doing it after an hour's practice and sweating 1.5 kilos, let alone after 3rd and all those arm balances, RESPECT. But perhaps that's because I'm muscling it, rather than employing good technique but that will come, it'll get easier..... wont it?

The video has the handstand drop to UD then a tentative, only half serious attempt at coming back up ( actually, come to think of it, was pretty damned serious at the time). Then it's back to dropping to the sofa to work on David's exercise, I need to watch his video again, lost the action somewhat.

For Claudia,
Krishanamcharya's, sorry that should read Sri Nathamuni's Yogarahasya. Claudia just bought a new edition of this, I mentioned that I had a first edition of TKV Desikachar's translation and that the translation as well as the pictures are somewhat different. Here's a flick through it.