Squeeze, soak, projection and reflection

Sunday morning power class is a notch above my weekday practice. I got squeezed and replenished in a few cycles through the class, turning over the leftover energy from yesterday and making room for clean morning fuel (aka a good breakfast). I ended up taking a late morning tap to round it off, and just woke up.

There were a couple of personal challenges evinced today. One that brought the glow of success, and the other, a realization that I have a bigger challenge to face.

We tried a pose that I had never done before, and I didn’t catch the name, but it involved moving from a standing balance pose to a modified crow out to high plank. Although I didn’t execute it perfectly, I feel with a few more attempts it will be singing (see resonance).

My second challenge came from acknowledging my present limits, deciding to stay on the safe side of that boundary, and then tackling the disappointment that stemmed from that decision. In a particularly challenging series of standing poses, I felt my knee tingle, like a sparkler had been set off inside. There was no pain, but I noticed the sensation and backed off. I couldn’t even attempt a modification with less intensity – it just wasn’t working out.

What came over me was disappointment – but the feeling wasn’t completely internal in its source and target. What arose above being disappointed in myself was the feeling that I had disappointed someone external to me (the instructor?). It sounds ridiculous, illogical, totally un-yoga… but that was what I felt. It’s a left over reaction from ballet, where I felt the teacher had invested in me, and “put” something in me and wasn’t “getting back”.

Photo by Uršula Berlo

So that’s got to go…. and that’s going to be a challenge because, well, I think today I realized that my practice is not completely seated from internal intention, and directed towards internal balance. There’s something like internal projection/reflection going on here. But it’s been acknowledged, so now I’ve got to do something about it. I have no ideas yet but I’ll ponder that in the next still moment.