my first unattended yoga practice

Yesterday morning I did my first unattended tailored session of yoga. My life it’s full of firsts at these times!

Me and yoga, we have a special relationship which starts somewhere back in… 1994. Coming back sometime soon to write about that story too. A story that brought me into my life and resuscitated me along the way!

Back to my session… I call it yoga, still I feel there is a long way for me to understand what it truly means. It was unattended as I was practicing by myself. It was tailored, custom made for me, having as objectives: build breath and strengthen my spine / back.

This is the first practice I received from my teacher, Ronen.

It took me 29:50,05 minutes. Ujjayi breathing is not necessarily new to my system – what I notice difficult is to get breathing – movement – pace in the flow. I was given instruction to get breath and movement coordinated and – as I don’t know yet the process, the movement, the sequences – the flow was interrupted at different times by the need of looking on the instructions paper, pausing to check what comes next, check some next move, recheck to see if I do it correctly etc.

My breath was already affected – I was having a sore throat, I was breathing a bit difficult.

I noticed:

• my ujjayi breathing seam (too?) soft, closer to natural breathing, I don’t control it and don’t know if I need to,
• my inhale is shorter then the exhale,
• I tend to finish movement faster on the inhalation phases,
• I feel active after the practice, in a relaxed-soft way,
• I feel good about it, about me starting a practice, a new story.

I feel counting also challenging, the counting on the fingers Ronen tought me works and now when I have many 4s and less bigger numbers (8, 12) it’s ok. Stopping myself of wondering how will it be when I have many different numbers, adding the breathing, the movement, the sequence. It’s practice, right? I practice.

Also, as in kineto therapy (soon a story on this too), I noticed my legs yet not strong enough to hold my body (posture no. 3). Is it called “posture”? 🙂 Hope yogi will not be mad at me if I misuse terms here. Well, if they are, they have an issue to ponder at!

I like using yoga blocks (see no. 11), nicely sets the base for the posture, keeping the spine erect and not pressing it or putting effort on it.

All the postures in this practice cares for my spine – feels safe, no pressure on it. I felt my lower back a bit warm after the session.

Update: Today I was having my second practice: 26:53,0 minutes. Same: uncoordinated, interrupted, better throat –  cleaner breathing.

I will keep noticing how practice changes, how I change in-during-after practice and I will write about it from time to time, keeping track of the practice.

PS: looking forward to the Introduction to yoga – a living practice workshop! I will have the needed basics then!