Ashtanga Yoga Charlottesville

Namaste Delay

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Go directly to your yoga mat, do not open the refrigerator, do not collect the mail.

Kath, Tate, and I tried to go to a free yoga class at Ashtanga Yoga Charlottesville this afternoon but unfortunately it was canceled. 🙁  I was so excited that Tate was interested in going to yoga so hopefully his interest will last through the next time I ask him to go.  He does yoga with me about twice a year.

Kath and I did get a lovely 3.5 mile walk in and I got to take the spinal decompression machine for a ride.

This fancy and high priced piece of equipment was one of the items included in the purchase of the clinic and the main reason Tate was super excited about the whole deal.  It is a Lordex Spinal Decompression machine and excellent for treating herniated discs among other spine ailments.  It felt great and I was at least a foot taller when I stood back up.

My uddiyana was set on practicing yoga so when I arrived back home it was time to get down to it.  I walked in the door and immediately turned on a Dave Farmar podcast, distraction is cheap these days so I knew that I must immediately get on my mat.  After about 20 minutes the hunger hit.  Is it strange that my appetite can go from 0-60 in a matter of minutes?  Before long my belly was taking all of my focus away from my pranayama and I committed to finishing another 15 minutes then calling it good and eating dinner.

Dinner was practically instant, reheated split pea soup topped with homemade (strained) yogurt.  A hearty hug in a bowl. 🙂

Something Dave said in the podcast Kath and I did on Sunday has stuck with me.  I have known for a long time that one focus of yoga can be to learn find calm and focus in uncomfortable situations (long holds, tricky balances, life) but I hadn’t thought about how finding grace in the transitions between poses can translate into “real life”.   Dave talked about paying extra attention to the transitions and practicing them with all of the grace, strength, focus, and balance you give to each pose.  He also spoke about how this relates to daily life and that transitions, as tricky as they can be, have their own challenges, beauty, and lessons.

My life has been nothing but transitions for the last 13 months so this really resonates with me.  Just a new way to think about them.

Time to go back to the kitchen to make some coconut oil fudge (sugar-free of course!).

108 Done

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And 2 to grow on.

Wow, completing 108 Sun Salutations in one hour was one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had recently.

108 is a sacred number in Hinduism and yoga.   The practice of repeating the Sun Salutation A series 108 times is sometimes called Yoga Mala, as a mala prayer necklace has 108 beads.  A 108 event is often offered around the Solstice or Equinox (change of seasons) and as a fundraiser rather than for-profit.  The cost of tonight’s attendance was non-perishable food for the local food bank.  In addition to the canned goods, the studio pledged a $5 per item donation to a local woman who is ill with cancer.

Kath, our men, and I headed out in the late afternoon to walk 1.4 miles to Ashtanga Yoga Charlottesville, our Sun Salute host for the evening.  The boys continued on to the bar while Kath and I went inside and staked claim on a little plot of studio floor for our mats.  The studio swelled and was nearly overflowing by the time we got started.

I was relieved to learn that there was a teacher to guide us and count because I knew that keeping track would be tricky.  Here’s the way it was to play out, we would do 10 sets of 10 Sun Salutations.  The teacher would call out the start of each set.  At the end of each set we would pause in Downdog for 5 full breaths.

We om’d a few times and away we went.

After 2 I lost count.

After 15 the guy accross from me started to sweat.

After 30-some I started to sweat.

After 42 I started to drip sweat.

At 50 I took my 5 breaths in Child’s Post instead of Downdog.

At 70 I glanced over and noticed Kath’s ankles were beaded with sweat.  Thank goodness!  It takes a lot to make that girl sweat and I was dripping.

70-80 was my most distracted.

I then found out that it was actually 80-90.

Nope.  It was 70-80.  I guess I wasn’t the only one distracted, the teacher called 90 and after a pregnant pause people started to whisper, “we’re at 80”.  Whoops.

At 80 my upper body started to talk.  Not hurt, just talk.

90-100 was my best set.

At 106 I was sad it was almost over.

At 108 I was happy it was over.

And even happier that I had done it.

After a bit of chanting we took a vinyasa (number 109!) to get to the floor for some cool-down poses.  We spent about 15 minutes doing seated poses before taking vinyasa 110 to get to a final seated meditation.

I was surprised that a. the whole thing went so quick and b. it was mentally and physically easier than I anticipated.  Overall it was a really amazing experience and one I would jump at the chance to replicate.

The walk home was actually a great cool-down, I hope it prevents some soreness!  Kath and I were desperate to get out of our sweaty clothes so Tate put the final touches on dinner while we dried off.  Man, you know someone’s a good friends when you can eat dinner with them on a Friday night in your sweat pants!

Tomorrow might involve some seriously sore hamstrings and triceps but I feel great right now!  I also did this 20 minute cardio and strength training workout this morning.  This workout doesn’t have as much weight action as some of my other favorites from Exercise TV but I love her cardio drills, not a single jumping jack!

How did your workout go?