today's endorphine rush

so today i attended my first formal anusara yoga class at the wellness center.

the flow was great, i really enjoyed the variations of poses the instructor pushed us through. i truly enjoyed the beginning chants and oms, and i hope to learn then very soon!

so the big accomplishment was actually coming into a confident bakasana [crow] and then managing to bring myself up into salamba sirsasana II. it was actually much easier than i had anticipated -even given that i was quite tired by that point in the practice.

what i find is that i have trouble settling my palms, lower and upper arms into the right position to lock properly with my knees. the next trouble I seem to find is bringing myself up, not into stand or forward bend, but that strangely similar half stand pose.

in any case i was finally able to do a solid bakasana with both feet and chin lifted as i looked forward.

i managed to wrangle my head down to touch along the ground -minus additional padding like a blanket or even the towel,

here's where the amazing clicked. i somehow managed to find the strength in my pelvis to lift and pull my hips all the way up to semi stack above my shoulders. more than that, my legs just flew up into salamba sirsasana II. i stayed there for a breath or two, then had to come out

and i actually managed to gauge my descent so that i brought my legs down bended, followed by pelvis so that my legs landed alongside my upper arms -back to bakasana.

and finally from bakasana i managed to jump back to chaturanga dandasana.

so that was the big accomplishment for the day!

my road

after a wonderful trip back home to my native belize, i came back to miami feeling a out of place and homesick.

missing my then long distance boyfriend had become a dull ache that seemed to live and breathe within me. and our relationship was held together by the most fragile of threads.

i can't seem to find the right analogy ... but let's give this a shot ... the ropes that bound us together was beginning to fray as a result of a number of things ... and though the ropes will probably never truly break, they have certainly snapped leaving the thinnest, yet strongest, gossamer threads.


as a child i was a whirligig of emotions and dreams and grand plans ... but as i got older, it became harder to translate those things into concrete plans and actions ... and i found myself questioning whether my commitment to endeavors and my ability to follow through

so initially, living in denial as we [the human condition] are wont to, i chose yoga as a means to commit to living a healthier and happier life. my current job is quite sedentary, my lifestyle is sedentary and by nature i don't enjoy my strenuous or more blatant forms of exercise.

really though, it was a means to cope with the loss of a relationship that had consumed my entire adult life (and half my lifespan). and in an even bigger way, it has added to my arsenal in the seemingly never-ending battle against depression.

this is not even mentioning my obsessive and rigorous schedule of two or three hours per day, everyday, for more weeks than i care to admit.

so i started yoga with the firm determination that it would not be a passing phase, as had been too many things in my years in this world. that i would hopefully gain as much from it as it seemed so many others do.

so the days rolled into weeks, the weeks into months. and eventually i felt confident enough in myself to step out and into the light and instruction of a formal yoga class (versus stagnating with my youtube videos)

attending classes at the medical wellness center has given me so very many things that i can't even begin to start explaining. and i am absolutely certain that the benefits i reap now will never be known in full, and that i won't ever know the full scope of how yoga has changed my life.