Back bending, July 2022
I’m a modern yogi. That means I use a habit tracker app. My goal is to practice Ashtanga yoga six times a week. It’s almost impossible to reach this goal. The app doesn’t allow you to subtract moon days. Serious students of Ashtanga yoga take a day off on moon days. These are 2 days less every month.
When I practice yoga I usually start the timer of this App. Yesterday I checked the result. It was disappointing. I only reached 26% of the 100%.
Why so less?
For about 2 months in 2022 I haven’t been at home. Is this a reason not to practice? Or is it an excuse? Perhaps a bit of both. I think more is possible. It’s a challenge to practice yoga when I’m not at home, but it’s not impossible.
At home again it usually takes some time to get back to my routines. It’s more or less sloppiness.
The frequency of any practice is a crucial ingredient if one is successful or not. This is a general rule. Daily practice is the key of accelerated learning whatever it is: It can be learning a language, becoming a better chef of mastering challenging asanas.
Before aiming for additional strength training or stretching sessions, I’ll aim for a more frequent yoga practice. It might be unrealistic to aim for 100%, yet I’ll aim for 50% in August. I can scale up the percentage, when this goal is reached.
All the special asanas goals are on hold. My focus is a disciplined daily practice. A few sun salutation don’t count as a practice. Yet to be on the mat for 30 minutes counts on challenging days. Better a few sun salutations or stretching for.5 minutes than doing nothing, but I won’t call this a practice.
Picture:
It’s an additional exercise before I perform shalabhasana. I start with being on my elbows. Then I stretch my arms. The next step is to walk the hands closer to the body to intensify the back bending. The shoulders move away from the ears. I relax, especially the back shall relax. It’s an easy exercise. First the easy exercises come, the more challenging ones follow.
Mantra for the goal Nr 1 in the morning:
I practice yoga now.
At the end of August I’ll check the statistics of my habit tracker again. I’m curious.