Life Upside Down

Finding room in our apartment for all of our favorite activities (and their associated storage needs) has been challenging. Many rooms have double purposes. The living room doubles as a photography developing and equipment storage area. The dinning room is like the basement work area. The table is the workbench, complete with stains from both cooking muffins and experimenting with alcohol backpacking stoves. The wall has piles of boxes, several old magazines that we're "saving," and a car jack set. The bedroom closet doubles for a garage, holding 2 kayaks (and all the gear), backpacking gear, suitcases, and a tiny space for clothes. Looking at our linen closet, only one shelf is devoted to sheets and laundry. The rest of the shelves hold a variety of tools. Some for the house, some for the bikes, and the rest for the car. Candles stored next to air filters next to bridesmaid dresses next to the vacuum next to the cooler next to a pile of board games.

So it is no surprise that finding an adequate space for my yoga practice can be a challenge. If I want floor space, I need to be in the living room, where I distract and get distracted by my lovely husband. If I need a wall to lean against, I need to be in the bedroom where I get even more distracted by my reflection in our mirrored closet doors.

Doing yoga in front of a mirror can be beneficial. In poses like warrior 1 or warrior 2, when I think that my knee and thigh are at 90 degree angles, it is nice to look over in the mirror and see what is actually going on and then make adjustments. I would move my body using the mirror and then try to remember how the pose felt so that I could recreate it on my own without the mirror.

Unfortunately, not all poses can be adequately critiqued using a mirror. Poses where weight is on your neck, such as bridge, headstand, or shoulderstand cannot be observed because it is dangerous to turn your neck. So in those situations, I use the "interval" mode on my camera. In this series of pictures below, I was trying to see how straight my body was in shoulderstand. When I look up at my feet, where should I be? A while back, when doing the pose I had Grant move my legs to where he thought was vertical. Last week I wanted to see if there was any change. The other two areas of focus were my shoulder position relative to my chest and neck and my pelvis/upper thigh area. To the average person, some of these shots may not seem to be so flattering. But to the yoga practitioner, I think there are lessons to be learned.

Setting up a support for my shoulders to rest on.

Laying down on the support, rolling legs up and over head, toes touch the floor before...

lifting legs up into...

Shoulderstand. Pelvis is tilted with legs to far forward/over head. I think I need more core strength to straighten that out. Shoulders look pretty good, but elbows are splayed. So I still need some opening in the shoulders so I can keep my elbows in a better and easier to support position.

Lowering down into a variation of plow pose where you try to lower your knees to your ears. Toes should be pointed but I can't reach the floor yet.


The internet seems a little slow today and I'm getting impatient with uploading pictures to blogger... so the rest are HERE. Enjoy.