Backbends, candy and nuts, upcoming book reviews

This morning, I did full primary and second up to Ardha Matsyendrasana, followed by three UDs and dropbacks and standups, and then went on to commence my daily adventures in half-tick-tocking, doing three half-tick-tocks and standing-up. The tick-tocking itself was more or less the same as yesterday's experience, except that I managed to hold the handstand for a couple of seconds on the second attempt. But considering the fact that I did the second series backbends before coming to tick-tocks, this is probably the most amount of backbending I have done in a single practice. Like ever.

Speaking of second series, I actually did not do any second series at all during the two self practice sessions at Lino's workshop this past weekend. Part of the reason was because I somehow felt it to be more respectful to do only primary in front of a teacher whom I had never practiced with before. The other part of the reason was that I was feeling like I wanted to take it easy and not over-extend/over-exert myself, especially because there's always this tendency to want to impress senior teachers (at least, I have this tendency...). So the primary-only rule was my way of counteracting this tendency. But now, after the workshop, I'm beginning to second-guess my decision here: I can't help but wonder if Lino and his assistants might not have given me some really useful feedback on second series if they had been able to see my second series practice. Ah well... what was that saying?... "If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas."

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I have definitely been feeling the effects of all that backbending today. My quads (especially the left quad) have this nice sore, achy sensation. And there's also this emotional feeling of being open. When I went down to my car to drive to campus, I couldn't help feeling that the sky seemed especially clear (even if it wasn't) and the air especially crisp and fresh (even if it wasn't). So much so, that I couldn't help standing there in the middle of the road and looking up at the sky for a couple of minutes. Then suddenly, I heard a low rumbling sound behind me. I turned around, and saw that it was my neighbor trying to drive past me. I quickly got out of the way. Hmm... yoga does ruin your life, doesn't it? It might cause you to almost get run over by your neighbor :-)

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In other news: Kino has just very generously sent me copies of her books Sacred Fire and The Power of Ashtanga Yoga, along with a CD of chants by her. Hopefully, I will be posting reviews of these books on this blog pretty soon. I know that I am very much behind the bandwagon (is this the correct expression?) on this: Both her books have been out for a while now, and probably millions of people have already reviewed them. But you must know that I am not usually in the reviewing products business; over the last year or so, people have approached me several times to review their products and/or websites on this blog, but I have always declined, because, well, this is not a yoga-product-reviewing website. But Kino is different, because she is, well, Kino. So stay tuned for these upcoming reviews.