Back to basics

Perhaps you have a solid practice. Maybe primary is cake, maybe you can stand up in urdhva, maybe you slice through intermediate like a hot knife through butter for your bulletproof coffee. Perhaps not, maybe Mari C still has your gruff.

Do you find that you plow through practice to get to your asana of the moment? Are there other areas in your life that you hurry through?

The practice is designed to humbly keep you a student. There will always be something to work towards, but what about those guys that came earlier, those asanas at the start, the foundation of the practice?

If we glaze over those guys like a Krispy Kream are we students still, or greedy for what is next? There are many lessons in those guys and when we think we have learned the asana, than you have failed it completely. 

If you allow yourself space in the practice, maybe an extra breath or two (I won’t tell the ashtanga gods) in some of those fundamental asana’s that correspond to where you are currently in the practice, you open yourself to being a student and discovering an entirely new asana in one you may have passed before. 

Simply because it is Friday or you are injured should not be your only excuse to practice primary or 1/2 primary. Wednesday is an acceptable day for that guy too. 

(Photo credit: Rose Yuen,  www.roseyuenphoto.com )