blossoming your buttocks

thanks once again for all the comments and emails. they really help when i'm feeling low or recovering from nasty stomach bugs such as i am now. the previous post took me a week to write as i couldn't manage to stay on the net long enough to get it all published and i've just added to it. speaking of this posting thing, it has been a biiigggggg challenge to sort it all out. i'm certain that some difficulties are because everything is written in chinese in the dashboard, as previously mentioned. i'm also learning that there are small things to look for in the page set up that will tell me if i can publish the post i just wrote or if it will be frustratingly sent out into cyber space, never to be found again, even if copied. breathe, jenna....
well, at 4 pm today, i officially completed the first week of the yoga course. this means that tomorrow is a free day. yay!! what to do? climbing? shopping? spa'ing? picture taking? new bond movie? add a slow coffee somewhere and that will be my day, if my tummy agrees.
it's been a tough week, not only because i've been sick or from the early a.m yoga practices but from all the new information being introduced everyday. this teacher training is highly influenced by the anusara style of yoga, known as heart-centered yoga and completely new to me. the poses all come from the 300+ hatha yoga poses, which all styles take from and i've studied yet anusara takes it to another level by introducing universal alignments to the pose and it's own unique language. in class, i will hear things like 'take your shin bones in, thigh bones back, shine your chest to the sky, melt your heart to the floor, feel the juicyness in your breath, take a delicious savasana', and yes, 'blossom you buttocks'. what the latter actually means is to open your pelvic floor to create a more stable foundation within the pose. without getting too technical and boring, i am simply amazed at the difference i feel in only a week while i'm in poses i've been doing years. it can be eyebrow raising at times to see jonas and sara say something completely contradictory to what i've studied in the past but such is yoga; it's everyones expression of their art at that moment.
a large part of this course is also meditation, yogic philosophy and an emphasis on self-study. i've dabbled a bit in meditation but always felt like i wasn't 'doing' it right and felt some resistance to it. what i've come to realize that it's not about what i am doing, its about my 'being' that matters. my favourite meditations are the chanting which happen in sanskrit everyday. we start with a group 'aum' and then do a 'call-and-response' with the teacher. it gives me shivers and goosebumps to feel and hear the energy of 28 pulsating beings as they sing with all their hearts. although i am no longer a practising christian, it's a pleasant reminder of my hours spent in mass and the hymms we would sing. i haven't yet made a trip to the temple next door to the blue house to see the monks chanting for lack of time. i will add that to tomorrows list.