Not the other knee!

Oh dear. Sundays are for 2nd series these days, and everything was going fine until the first lotus, the one where you reach behind to clasp your toes (next year), and drop back. Anyway, when I went to pull my right foot toward my left hip crease, my beautiful steady lotus folding right knee went creak, crick, ack! Not good. Not good! This is my good side and things were just getting so much better.

But I'm not going to panic. Not much anyway. I went through the rest of the practice as best I could, beginning to have grave doubts as to whether I have any business practicing 2nd series anyway. Although the left foot is beginning to move behind the head... I could really use a teacher here but there's no one around here teaching 2nd series.

By the way, have you noticed that Kino's voice is very annoying when she tells you to drop back at 7am? Dropping back is not very pleasant so early, and suddenly her voice is just.... not what I want to hear. At least watching her do tictacs is amusing, because it's not like I'm attempting THAT at 7am.

Okay, so this is a very selfish post in a way, because I'm whining. Which reminds me of my post on time, in which I was also whining. Later it occurred to me that I'm like a kid with a dollar in a candy shop, crying because there are so many choices and I can't have them all. Make your choice, and thoroughly enjoy it. That is lesson enough for today.

So here's hoping that the right knee thing is a fluke, and that the very fact that I felt it means that it's not injured as deeply as the left knee, which I didn't feel at all until it was too late. There was never a sense of injuring the knee, only a sense of noticing later that it had been injured.

Time

This drawing is from Light on Yoga, so here is a young Iyengar in Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, or upward facing dog. You do a lot of this pose in any kind of a vinyasa class, and especially an ashtanga class. David Swenson reminded us that this is a backbend, so focusing on the backbend everytime you transition through upward dog is a great way to unkink your upper back, warm up the back for deeper backbands, and also to avoid just blasting through it as if it were a waystation and not a pose in its own right. The most obvious modification while one is building the strength and flexibility to hold this is to take the knees to the floor.

Day 5 of the Fall Detox and I still feel good. Starting to long for eggs for breakfast and pasta with tomato sauce, but it's not too bad. The tea really helps and there is a broth too which I have not had time to make. And time, it turns out, is the real issue. Time to cook, time to apply sesame oil to the skin, time to shop for all the ingredients, time to make the tea. Time to do yoga, and take care of my family (oh yes, THAT full time job!), time to go to work, take showers, blowdry and flatiron my curly hair into silky flat submission! Time to talk with my husband, to draw, to watch my children grow and learn, to help them with their homework. Time to walk, pet, and throw the frisbee for my dog. Time to clean my house and do the endless laundry and the million sundry other things and I have no time left to think, relax, unwind. TV? Already I don't watch this. Who has time? Time to visit friends, to tend the garden, to remove the weeds. I simply don't have time to do all the things I want to do in this life, at least not right now. I long for all the time that I've wasted to come back to me, so that I can make better use of it. The hardest thing I have to do is choose. Art or yoga? Family or friends? Time for self-care or time to take care of my family? Paperwork and finances- you might notice that they didn't come very high on the list, and it shows.

How to decide when life is so interesting and full? What can I possibly give up to make more space for....