I'm totally, completely, fully, 100%ly excited about my experience here. We've been doing some awesome yoga sequences that Paul and Suzee choreographed like "flying dragon" and "infant" and "golden seed" I love all of these. Infant sequence is the slower/softer of the three, and you can really experience this sequence as if you were a little baby. Starting on your back, nice and easy, just exploring the first movements as if you'd never done them in your life. So precious! and slowly building up to "childhood" ending in standing poses. The golden seed is slightly stronger starting off with taoist breathing, cultivating chi, it consists of about 12 poses or so including (in english!) elephant, drinking bird, rocking horse, a few twists and ideas of directing your chi towards heaven, earth, space. Beautiful. Then flying dragon!! I love it. It's more intense, like you'd think a dragon would be. Starting off in flying dragon (which looks like warrior 3, arms out) gecko, twisted dragon, dragon wings, dragon belly, then the dragon flies OVER the ocean to do the other side... back and forth back and forth until you are practically breathing fire. I love the balance poses. I found the in flying dragon/warrior 3/virabhadrasana 3 my balance is better when I invert my base foot slightly. It was so exciting because I always felt so incredibly unstable in this pose before. I became so discouraged always in my classes thinking I had so far to go before I could learn "balance" But in this training I've been liberated by the idea that since each of our skeletons are so different, each pose will look different. It is always the most important thing in yoga to pay attention to how your OWN body works best. Keeping my planted foot straight forward took my hips out of their most stable position which of course left me falling over always. Who would have known- if I had not been freed of universal alignment ideas- that MY hips are more stable with a slight inversion of my planted foot. Here's the really weird part, I tend to be slightly more externally rotated in the hips (which causes my legs to turn out to the side instead of in towards my center line). I'm so excited to explore these postures that require balance/stability with a more intuitive sense, rather than a sense of doing a posture aesthetically correct. Really the more important part is that since we are all so incredibly varied all the way down to our skeletons, I am gaining understanding and compassion for the appearance of postures that do not or even cannot ever look like what you'd see in your modern yoga picture book. Not everyone is a model, and I'm realizing that most models are chosen based on their god given set of bones (YES! I absolutely do not doubt that these people put in time and effort to get into "advanced" postures) Most people who have been doing yoga for years and years that still cannot do padmasana (lotus) probably never will because of boney compression that stops the movement. Bummer, they'll never be enlightened... I guess they'll just have to give up and work in an office. No, just do what you can do, go as far as you can go, and be content. It's a great thing to recognize your individual range of motion, and it IS finite, recognize it and maintain it through yoga practice. When you know your skeletal range of motion, you can become more aware of what will help you when you are tight and cannot reach your (skeletal) range of motion, and take some of the pressure off trying to be the greatest most flexible yogi.
Moral of the story: Yoga postures are ultimately limited by our own individual set of bones, not karma, or necessarily flexibility.
Peace
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