Personal Practice

Last night I practiced for about an hour and 10 minutes.  Sometimes I don't feel like it, but I have learned over the years that when you don't feel like doing it is when you 

• NEED IT THE MOST

• GET THE MOST BENEFIT FROM IT! 

That's my advice as a 30 year veteran.  "Just do it" as Suzuki Roshi said (famously) (and you thought it was NIKI.  Nope, they stole the phrase).  So I practiced kriya that Baba Ganesh taught me for about 25 minutes.  I started out extremely stiff, I'd been working in the yard for several hours and my legs were tight as a drum.  By the end of the kriyas I was thoroughly warmed up and felt much better. 

There seemed to be some blockage from my head down my arms as I practiced, and when I did a couple of the kriyas, it made me cry a little as they released.   One of my teachers, Osho, (Bagwhan Shri Rasneesh) said never feel bad about crying.  It shows that the heart is open and it and lets out etheric debris that cleanses, purifies, and heals us.

Then I started doing asana - some hip openers and leg stretches, because that was the area that was "talking to me".  I discovered a new pose I call "The Mosquito" because if you look at it from above it looks sort of like a mosquito.  The cool thing about practice is that if you do it, you always feel better, it pulls you out of your whiney place, and once you get going, you can really do whatever feels good to open up the body and get prana (life force energy) moving.  

I also discovered a new variation of Reclining Bound Angle Pose that opens the fronts of the hips rather than the groins.  I have to remember to teach it today at Seniors.  The most requested poses by my students are hip openers.  

Everyone is dealing with mooladhara (root) chakra issues it seems, including me. (Mooladhara is the chakra dealing with survival issues - jobs, money, shelter, food, health, etc.). So if you want to try it, look at the picture, go into the pose without the strap, and roll pelvis so that one leg is vertical and the other one rests on the floor.  Then push the foot that is now on the floor strongly into the floor and lift that hip off the floor.  Awesome!