Week 1 - Learning To Breathe

After one whole week of being consistent with my asana practice, I feel GREAT! I actually did a "trial" week over Spring Break just to give myself some time and leniency to get into a rhythm...lol...After a trial week and the completion of one full week, I am sore. But not overly sore like "why in the world would I do this to myself kind of sore" but a good one. One where I know my muscles are building and strength is beginning to increase. I loved it. 

I did have one minor setback or disappointment though. One of which was the seemingly fast pace of the ashtanga practice. From my on and off asana practice over the past 2 years, I was used to taking my time and taking as many breaths as I needed in each both. This is very different from the pace of an Ashtanga practice or so one would think. In Ashtanga the principle is one breath=one movement. So if your breaths are quite short this will go very fast which I do not like. When I'm going extremely fast, I feel like I don't have the time to actually sink in to the pose and allow it to burn toxins out of whatever part of the body is being worked. More importantly, I feel like it didn't allow me to go sink deep into the crevices that each pose brings out. 

The "seemingly" fast pace of Ashtanga becomes a little bit harder when you add the prescription of diaphragmatic breathing in the ashtanga tradition. If you've never tried this before, it may seem a little odd and somewhat hard at first. Kino MacGregor has a YouTube Video I think demonstrating this type of breathing. I say its odd because it does not involve the use of your belly to breathe. Instead you are truly using your diaphragm and inflating your lungs 3-dimensionally. It was hard for me because I was so used to seeing the rise and fall of my stomach as the indication for my breath instead of my...I don't know...lungs...the organs specifically built to absorb and filter my breath :-/. But after a few days of focusing on this new "style" of breathing, I've grown to love it and carry it off the mat into my everyday life. I feel like I'm able to breath in more and more deeply...AND... it allows for me to take deeper and longer breaths allowing for the one breath=one movement to last much longer and slow down the pace for me in my at-home practice....Needless to say I now love it. And am looking forward to week 2 of this journey...