Yoga

I'm going to add a new category, but this one isn't for a new interest - but one I'm coming back to.

I took up yoga seriously several years ago.  I was trying to figure out how to lead a post-academic, grownup-dancing life.  Yoga was techy/historic enough (just wait until I get to the names) and active enough to interest me.

I did a couple of years of weekly classes, and really liked it.  I bought books and videos, the occasional magazine, and really immersed myself, as I have a tendency to do.  However, some of the other parts of my life stood up and demanded more attention, and I drifted away.

One of the parts I regretted not getting out of my yoga instructional experience, was a strong sense of what home practice should be.  Perhaps I'm being too didactic, but I can't help but compare it to a ballet barre series.  In ballet, you start class with plies (kneebends) and big stretches.  You're working big muscles, warming them up.  You progress from the big muscles to the small, from gross movements to fine, controlled ones.  No jumps until half an hour into class.  No flashy leaps until the very end.

So I'm gardening and aching, and wanting some sort of quotidian yoga practice - a time-tested series that will protect and prepare my body to deal with the stresses of my days.  I want to make it into a daily ritual, so I can ground my day with it.  And I want someone to say 'here's the list, do it.'

I exchanged some email with a lovely woman I met at Gulf Wars who is a yogini, and apparently teaches (though I missed her classes at GW - too many wonderful things!), and asked her about it.  She wanted to know what books and videos I had, and what sort of instructors I'd had.  In answering, I remembered one book that (like most on my shelf, sigh) I really hadn't gotten enough out of.

It's Yoga For Your Type, by Dr. David Frawley and Sandra Summerfield Kozak M.S.  I'd associated it with the Ayurvedic types in the title, which have to do with what sorts of ill humours you're particularly susceptible to, and forgotten that in the back are lists of asana series.  Weeks and weeks worth.

So the last few days I've been doing the series.  I reread the explanation of the dosha types, and concluded that although my teacher five years ago called me kaphic, now I'm definitely pitta.  So I've done pitta-reducing 'emergency' pose series for two days, and as I felt less injured and more in control, started the 'everyday' Pitta-reducing series this morning.  Here's today's list of poses, described as Level #1, Week 1:

• Neutral Spine
• Pelvic Tilt
• Neck Stretch
• Cat Stretch
• Vrksasana
• Wall Hang
• Back Vinyasa
• Child's Pose
• Baddha Konasana
• Janu Sirsasana
• Upavistha Konasana
• Alligator Twists
• Savasana