Full Vinyasa Intermediate + Kino's Intermediate DVD update

Full Vinyasa Primary went so well Thursday that I wanted to try it with Intermediate. I'd wanted to try it yesterday but woke up at six instead of five and not being sure how long it would take, gave it a miss. Practiced Vinyasa Krama instead, first one in a little while, nice gentle practice. This morning I set my alarm for 5:30 but woke up without it at a little after five. Went with the candles again, really makes a difference, takes the edge off the cold, dark, early mornings.

Has anyone seen Lino Miele's Intermediate and Advanced A DVD? is it Full Vinyasa? Would be good to see it done.

I probably got it pretty much right, half Vinyasas for each leg, full Vinyasa after every asana. It was great, really great actually, probably my most enjoyable 2ND. Intermediate can be a little heavy, tricky asana on tricky asana but with a full Vinyasa in between it seems to take some of the pressure off. I like that hitting the reset button, approaching each asana as if it's the only asana, nothing before it nothing after it. Strange, full Vinyasa should seem like your doing more work, you are doing more work, about 35 full vinyasas plus the half's and yet it all feels less rushed, more relaxed, mellow, flowing.

The series itself went well, nice full bind in Pasana, a deep relaxed Kapo, not my deepest but a nice one. I approached LBH a little differently, instead of my usual VK addition of Akarna Dhanurasana A (the Archer) and B, I added a couple of things from the other evenings Yin session, what they call sleeping swan and a dragon variation where you take a long step forward and instead of leaning back into a backbend you just rest your forearms on the mat (back leg is still trailing as in Swan). In Yin you stay there for five minutes each leg, here I just took five breaths then a half Vinyasa and came back for Eka Pada Sirasana. I like adding the occasional extra posture, if it makes it more comfortable and deeper why not? I should do a post on all the different LBH prep options from VK (and Yin), I have a few of them now.

Karandavasana was good again, tighter lowering of the lotus and nice smooth, almost effortless uncurling back up. I still have my chin on the mat though, need to wean myself off that, but how?And on it went, everything quite relaxed and comfortable, breath nice and steady, not too sweaty but sweaty enough for LBH. On into finishing and again I took full Vinyasas throughout that too. It took just under 90 minutes but that was with the shorter Intermediate Standing sequence. Was quite surprised at the time, was able to take a good half hour for PCM.

So I'm hooked on Full Vinyasa and will run with this for awhile. Alternating Primary and Intermediate always made such good sense to me so I'll do that throughout the week, besides I love primary, why drop down to only practicing it once a week? Full vinyasa Primary takes a long time so I'll need to do those on my day off and Sunday. I still want to do a straight Vinyasa Krama practice once a week to continue getting a handle on the different sub routines and asana relationships, and besides, in my head at least, I've kind of brought the two systems together, practising Ashtanga with Vinyasa Krama in mind.

So I'm thinking something like this...

Monday. Intermediate (full Vinyasa )

Tuesday. Primary (full Vinyasa )

Wednesday. Intermediate ( full vinyasa )

Thursday. Primary

Friday. REST

Saturday. Vinyasa Krama

Sunday. Primary ( full Vinyasa )

Oh and I heard from Kino, ' ...the Intermediate Series DVD is in final production now and will be ready within one month.'

And here's a first look at the cover from Kino's new website

http://www.kinoyoga.com/products.html