And now Primary feels the stranger

First week back playing Ashtanga 'by the rules' for a long while, full 2nd series Sunday to Thursday and I've just finished my Friday Primary, hell, I'm even going to take the Saturday rest day tomorrow.

Beginning of the week was a little tough, hot, sweaty, messy 2nd series practice, second half of the week with my new patented heart rate focus was better, more on the breath, much better.

Something's changed in my attitude to 2nd I, It's going to take a while to work out what that is exactly but there's certainly a shift in perspective. Never really liked 2nd that much, always resented it for not being Primary and it's always been hard work, that was OK though, love the warrior narrative, me. In the second half of the week though it was all much calmer. It still felt a long practice but I approached it in a more matter-of-fact way. Kapo, Dwi pada, Karanadavasana, they stood out less, the different sections of the practice were more... well sections but part of a whole.

Let me step back a second, when I say I always found it hard, I don't mean the postures exactly, not saying they were easy, spent a lot of time working them out but compared to  many I've been lucky, turns out I'm more flexible than I expected to be in all the right places. I mean hard in the series as a whole, just an uphill battle, confronting and defeating one foe (read posture) after another such that I've never, until now, been able to relax with the series. There's was always a girding of the loins when I stepped on the mat.

I still don't find it as meditative as Primary but I'm much relaxed about it, it's just practice.

Did I say primary was meditative? Not this morning. The week had gone fine, no aches or pains until this morning,  creaked going into all the forward bends and really felt the hip openers. If 2nd came together this week then Primary was all over the place, disjointed, no flow to it.... it felt a bit of a stranger or is that the stranger, out of place.

But that's OK it's given me a plan for my evening Vinyasa Krama with it's short asana practice. Had wondered how I was going to choose the asana subroutines but now I'll pick them to support and extend my morning Ashtanga. During the week when I practicing 2nd series I can work on some of the Forward bending and hip opening subroutines in VK that I don't practice that often and then on Friday when I'm practicing primary in the morning I can do some of the VK backbends.

Find I'm quite looking forward to another week of 2nd, I believe Sharath is in town next week or is it the one after, be nice if he did another of those live streams but this time of 2nd, be interesting to see how it looks this year. Might fish out the 1980's Jois led 2nd from yoga works next week, perhaps towards the end of the week or not, its going well, perhaps its best not to mess with that for a bit.

If it aint broke, don't fix it.

I'm a repairer though, can't help tweaking things, modifying things...