(from yoga journal, link below) We started with practicing some poses against the wall, going from trikonasana (triangle) to ardha chandrasana (half moon pose). I could never do ardha chandrasana on my own. I would get up and feel weirdly clumsy and not sure where my body was or was supposed to be in space, and then my leg felt weak and I'd tip over and feel crappy.
But, practicing against the wall I could feel where I was supposed to be, and where I was, and then I could concentrate on lifting and feeling light and eventually balancing without a block. It was very nice.
Then we did some hand stand practice. First we kicked up like when we were little kids, not caring about hand placement, just a little jump over you go! And I was up, and holding it. But then we went back to caring about where our hands were and the one time I almost got up, either my mind or my body (my guess is my mind) got scared that my wrists were going to flip over or snap (because, yeah, that's likely) and back down I came. Ah, to try again another day.
Then we worked on this.
I didn't know we were going to work on that. She didn't say "now we'll do Astavakrasana." And even if she had I wouldn't have known what she meant. But there we were, sitting cradling our lower legs in our arms like a baby, then, um, trying to get our knee on our shoulder and straighting the leg? okay... Oh, then we'll bring the other leg up so our legs are crossed and lean forward and hey, what's this? The scissoring out of the legs so they look like the photo will come in time, but it was very cool to get up to where I was.
We finished with some soothing forward bends and she guided me towards the ground in wide-angle seated foward bend and my forehead touched the ground! It's amazing to see what my body can do when I stop thinking I know what it can do.
I am so glad I went to class. Namaste.
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