Noah Maze : Karandavasana penny dropped

Hongkongstuey mentioned this guy in a comment so I did a search of Youtube.

It was a good find, He seems to have the same stocky frame that I have and like me, no matter how bendy he gets is never going to be that elegant.

OK, I need to pause for a moment here and insert a line to say that after watching a few more videos he's not that stocky after all and actually, come to think of it, IS quite elegant at times, thus undermining this whole argument and post. In fact I'm not as stocky as I was when I started either. I could delete the post and start again but it's a good excuse for Noah videos.

Wish I'd come across these videos a couple of years ago, think I would have believed earlier that all postures were possible. For me it was a slow realization as the heel grab Kapo,  leg(s) behind head postures, intense twists like the marichi's A-H, purna matsyendrasana, weird party tricks like Viranchyasana, yoga dandasana, parsva dandasana,what else... omkarasana, even hanumanasana became doable that everything probably was manageable after all, even for someone who wasn't lithe, small boned and long limbed. Not pretty perhaps but manageable.

Not that it matters of course, the fancy poses,  but it still fascinates me what this rapidly aging body will actually do, think now it's more a feeling of amusement rather than triumph, tend to laugh out loud sometimes from the sheer absurdity of something like urdhava Dandasana B, to quote Life of Brian once again, "What's the point Stan".

Still, the tricky ones are fun to work on, the same focus we brought to bare on marichi D you bring to  kandapindasana or whatever. I like how the mind shifts, for a while your focusing on the breath, then in poses you know well you become focused on alignment perhaps, the little differences of approach and then there's the pose (whichever tricky one your working on), like a tricky line in a mantra that you keep breaking down, struggling to get your tongue around.

Whatever gets you on the mat in the morning, it's just asana, just wonderful cryptic asana.

But back to Noah. I must have watched 90% of all the Karandavasana videos on YouTube at sometime or other, often slowing them down and taking screen shots, trying to work out what's going on here or there. Missed this one though, the spelling perhaps, -Karanda vasana. Perhaps it's the angle or just where I am now that I'm ready to notice it but he undoes his lotus later than I do. So I checked other karandavasana videos, most are the same. I undo my lotus too soon. I need to stay bound and take it all the way to the the top and stretch and THAT should bring my arms back up getting rid of the squishness.

Thanks Noah



So he's an Anasura guy right... I have to keep reminding myself that however much the nonsense that surrounds the different styles irritates me at times, the personalities, dogma's, self promotion, Sycophancy, whatever... ultimately, people just do their practice, whether it's Anasura, Bikram ( and someone sent me some hilarious early videos of Bikram doing yoga tricks last week), Ashtanga, Iyengar or the once or twice a week flashy, sparkly, studio yoga, we all just get on a our mat and love our practice.

Apologies for a rambling, meandering post, I have no idea what I'm going on about but just wanted an excuse to post this next video and say that my life will be complete when I can do it too.



We all have a tricky posture or two we're working on and get a little obsessive about, sometimes the whole practice seems to revolve around that one pose, leading up to it, apprehension building and then afterwards we just want to rush through the rest of the practice  as if practice ended with that one posture.

On a good day though it's just one of thirty-two or so other postures, interesting in a different way but just another pose. Thankfully I seem to be getting more and more good days.

So M's off to work (it's my day off) Vinyasa Krama today, backbend focus (see yesterday's post), Bow and Meditative series and see about getting this 108 dropbacks out of the way. AC did hers ( way to go AC) I should do mine for some closure and then settle down to fifteen- twenty a day for a couple of weeks and see what that's all about. Got to try that Karandavasana too and perhaps a nod at Noah's jump to Urdhava Kukkutasana.... just to see, it's my day off, play a little why not.

Things like this 108 dropback project make me think of those old yogi's what great experimenter's they were, the postures they tried out, the kriya's, pranayama's, the tapas, long long stays in a bed of nettles, those wonderful crazy hatha yogi's.

Hatha, just prep for the Raja, probably doesn't matter how you approach it as long as you sit afterwards ('though of course in Ashtanga, for example,  it might be argued that the sit is going on during all the jumping about), What was that Krishnamacharya was supposed to have said about this...

'What's the point of cleaning the room and then not using it'

Now please Ishvara, give me that 108 so I can post a video and bury these ramblings quickly.

Update
Gave the karandavasana a go, tried to keep the lotus bound all the way to the top ( I used to unfurl it near the top ready for the flip out)  and then try to pull it up a little to try and unsquish my arms. Can you see a little movement there, I think I can, felt like I was lifting up a little. Got to get my balance right, take the lotus back a little further past my head, here I started to lift but my lotus was too far forward and I had to drop out of it. Interesting thing to work on, quite excited about it.

Oh, update coming on the 108 dropback project ...... : )

One more Noah Video, thanks for letting me know about this one Arturo. This is Noah teaching a way of getting into Eka pada kapotasana. Feels a bit of a cheat as opposed to lowering back into it in typical kapo style but less chance of falling off to the side.