The Drop back's didn't turn out to be as scary as I imagined and I was wondering if the Kapo might be the same, the idea of it being perhaps worse than the reality, all bark no bite.
Oh but no, it bites.
I decided on a light toe bind rather than aiming for half way up the foot or the heels. My main reason for exploring it was to see if I could manage a longer, slower steadier breath than usual. As it turned out I managed twenty-five slower, steadier breathes, about two minutes, not so long.
Long way to go then.
Problems I found, were what to do with my head and cramping in the quads. I felt like the angle of my head wasn't ideal, always seemed OK for the usual five breathes but for a longer period it shows up as putting stress on the neck. It could of course be bad technique on my part or because I went for the softer bind, perhaps grabbing the heels would bring me up higher and create a better angle, free the head up more. The quads just began to ache half way in and I tried a half hearted attempt to bring in some Vipassana technique to deal with the aching. In the end I was happy with the twenty-five breathes and still managed to go into Kapo B and then come up.
Fifteen minutes still seems insane but five minutes of longer steadier breathing doesn't seem such a bad idea to occasionally consider.
DROP BACK CHALLENGE UPDATE : Day 3
I thought it had gone all too well on Sunday. I just did the usual yesterday, erring on the side of caution so no Day 2 video, couldn't wait to try them again today. It didn't go so well, couldn't seem to get the same rhythm going and failed to come up five times out of twenty. I was trying to take my head back later and perhaps that had something to do with putting me off, or perhaps I was just trying too hard.
Still no harm done, except to my ego. Here's a video, speeded up, because, lets face it, these are kind of like watching grass grow.
3 comments:
apparently, Iyengar says that basically all fear is really a fear of death, and no yoga posture ever killed anyone, so any fear/discomfort that we feel in a pose is irrelevant. Um, yeah. I try to tell myself I'm not going to die when I'm trying to hold that long headstand, but I really do think I will die. I am sure kapo will kill me. But I will try this. Since I am competitive, I will try it for three minutes.
Grimmly! 15-minute Kapo?! Really?
It might kill me, too, Dana, but I will try it anyway. This Saturday. And the dropbacks. It is so hard to be this competitive...
15 minutes of madness. I think it is too much, supposedly he did it to show it could be done, according to a comment last week.
but i do think that any pose that makes us anxious or panicky is probably a good one too work on staying in longer and breathing more slowly in.
On the other hand my credo in Philosophy hass always been to challenge those truths you feel most certain of. So perhaps those poses we're most certain of, those which we think we nail so well and take for granted, perhaps those are the ones we should be looking at again and again. Kapo scares us but perhaps it's Tadasana we should be most mindful of.
my twee thought for the day ; )
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