Pashasana...

Okay, many of you will see the name of this post and not even know what that means, but many of you who practice Ashtanga will and will have a very strong opinion or not about it.

I've been to Mysore to study with Sharath three times now, I'm still here on my third trip. My first trip I was stuck at supta kurmasana for much of the trip and then not. He told me in a meeting at the end of that trip, you go home and work on standing up and dropping back, so I did. I came back on my second trip quite able to stand up and drop back on my own, expecting big things from myself, moving into intermediate series and blah, blah, blah. My back went out for a month, he changed my practice to accommodate that and to help heal it, when it healed he kept me doing primary and drop backs for almost the whole last month. Again we had a meeting, I convinced him my back was totally better, he gave me pashasana to work on that last week I was here. Told me you go home and work on that, come back doing it and learn intermediate. Again, I'm here and have never figured this posture out. This whole trip have been working on it. I can get deeper in it than ever (at least since I began the practice again in 2012, before that I was doing it with no problem when I was originally practicing back in 2000-2008, was also learning third series then as well) and when Sharath assisted me in it the first month, it was as if I was doing it on my own and was amazing, but still I couldn't get the bind on my own, since then I've had a couple assistants work with me on it, one of which this morning got me in it with what seemed like not a terrible amount of effort, but maybe that's just my perception, they may think otherwise.

I just cannot figure out how to get the wrapping arm, the bottom arm, up high enough. It feels like there's tightness in my shoulder of that same arm that prevents it getting high enough to grab the fingers of the top hand coming down to meet it. Not sure if that is it or not, but I know I'm not too heavy around the middle to do it, I see chunky people people doing it all the time. I know its not tightness in my spine because here my spine has gotten really open and is twisting with a lot of ease. I can't keep my heels down when I do it on my own, but I can maintain the balance with them up so that's okay. I just don't know.

But I will say this, every time I'm assisted in it it feels like something is being squeezed out of me. I can only call it rottenness, lol. I guess that's an actual word because my MAC didn't try to change it to something else...hahaha. I feel more humble and relaxed and even less crabby after I've done the posture fully, than I do when I half ass it and don't get assisted in it. Which is interesting.

Coming here each time I feel like I get more and more of that inner icky stuff out, so maybe I thought there wasn't much left, but with the work I've done on this posture this trip I'm finding more and more coming out. But more and more after I do it I'm feeling amazing, and its making my back bending deeper.

Now, I say all this to basically say, I think the block to me doing this posture is completely energetic. I don't know if you know what that means or if you even believe in that as a possibility, but I do and this is my story so it doesn't really matter if you do or not! I am not sure where the block is, what its about, but if I'm able to do something with an assist and yet still cannot do it on my own but have no real reason why then I think its something I'm missing that I still need to work on.

It could completely be the fact that I'm ready to get past this posture and know that I don't have trouble with almost any of the other postures in intermediate series, or rather didn't use to when I was practicing it before. It could also be the fact that I know I used to do it more easily before and am frustrated with this older version of my body that is taking its sweet, slow time figuring it out. It could also be that I know there's a chance I may never again get this posture on my own and then will be at this point in my practice for the rest of my life.

It could also be none of those things, but the fact that I'm holding animosity towards someone or not letting go of something that is no longer serving me, or anything for fucks sake that I just don't know what it is! All I can I say is I'm frustrated. And as soon as I say that I realize that today, I'm not terribly frustrated about it. I only get frustrated when I think about it in opposition to my past practice before I took that 4 year break. Hmmmm, maybe its this comparing myself to my old self stuff? Maybe its that I'm not being fully present and embracing where I am and making peace with where I am?

Maybe, just maybe, it doesn't matter if I can ever do this fucking posture. Hmmmm, that's a novel idea isn't it???