Thursday, February 17, 2011

Practice report: Practicing while feeling under the weather

Did the same practice this morning that I have been doing for the past couple of weeks: Full primary and second up to pincha mayurasana.

I was a bit hesitant about practicing all the way to pincha this morning, because I was feeling a bit under the weather. I had this unpleasant feeling at the back of my throat (the kind that tells you a cold might be coming) and was feeling a little tired. But I remembered a couple of my teachers' advice about practicing when under the weather. A couple of years ago, David Williams said at a workshop that the primary purpose of the practice is to increase the flow of prana in the body; so, unless one is so deathly ill that one can't get out of bed, one should do whatever practice one can do, and then quickly bundle up in blankets and go into savasana. The idea is that because practice increases the flow of prana in the body, it actually helps with the healing process. My teacher in Milwaukee (now you know who he is :-)) advised that the only time you shouldn't practice is when you have severe, uncontrollable diarrhea, because in that state, any loss of control of mulabandha would create a very unpleasant mess :-) So, unless you have severe, uncontrollable diarrhea and/or are deathly ill, you should practice whatever you can, and then have a good savasana.

Which is what I did this morning. I decided to take the practice breath by breath, and see how far I can go. It turns out that for me, "practice whatever I can" brought me all the way through primary, and second up to pincha, which is my usual practice anyway :-) And I did it in about 2 hours and 15 minutes, which is a very respectable pace for me. Actually, according to Sharath, this might mean I might go crazy soon, since I'm taking more than two hours, but whatever, I'm not in Mysore, so it doesn't count :-)

A noteworthy incident occurred in dropbacks and standups. My fingernails were a bit long, and as I walked my hands further in to stand up, they were scrapping uncomfortably against the rug at one point. I was worried taht they would snap. Now that would be really uncomfortable :-(. Need to remember to trim my nails soon. Fortunately, tomorrow's a moon day, so I have a extra day to get that done :-) 

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