30 Day Challenge, Day 2: The hips don't lie

It's the second day of the 30 day challenge and, being a Saturday, my options are limited to morning classes. Given that on a typical Saturday I usually join the living closer to midday snack time than to breakfast, I was none too pleased when my phone, possessed by its alarm, began furiously convulsing at 8:45am. 


I made it to the 10am Ashtanga Flow 1 class around 15 minutes early and, after playing car-tetris in the parking lot for a few minutes, I parked in front of the restaurant that shares the parking lot with the studio. I made my way into the ashtanga room, where we proceeded to play mat-tetris for the next ten minutes. 


I am sure that not everyone feels this way (and this has been a much more difficult sentiment to find in the hot room), but I love when a class is nice and full. Today, there was very little space between mats and I think I saw a woman kick the man behind her in the face during one-legged downward dog. I'm fairly certain it was her husband. 


Despite some of the unavoidable struggles that come with decreasing mat-proximity, I have personally found that there are some great benefits.


One of my greatest mental struggles in yoga has always been fixing my gaze, and avoiding looking at others in the class. Yes, it is true that I was once an addicted practitioner of "watch-asana," but I have gradually worked towards keeping my focus on my mat. While I have been recovering from overexerting myself in watch-asana, I've found that the easiest environment for me in which to relapse is a small class. When there are only two or three people in the class along with me, it is not very difficult to see what others are doing. If I become fixed on someone else during a class, I inevitably compare my pose to theirs and lose focus of what I am trying to do. 


I have found, however, that the larger the class size, the less I look at others. There are just too many bodies to focus on one, and often you are too concerned with ensuring that you're not "sticking your asana in someone's face" (as my teacher Katie reminded us today) to care to stare. 


Once we adjusted to the limited personal space, we began a hip-opening class with the popularly excruciating downward-facing frog. 


Ow. 


I started to feel anxious, and was fairly certain that I was going to pull something far away from where it was supposed to be. My breath quickened, and everything in my body was telling me to get the hell out of that pose. As I pushed into my arms slightly in an attempt to release this nasty little frog, Katie began discussing the hips as emotional storehouses. She explained that we hold a lot of our feelings here, that we should acknowledge those feelings as they arise, and breathe through them.


Huh. I gave it a try. Sure enough, as I kept assuring myself that the anxiety was all in my head, it started to go away. Lunges, one-legged downward dogs, and pigeon after pigeon seemed natural and calming, even though my body was working pretty damn hard. Before I  even knew it, we returned to downward-facing frog. This time was different. Sure, my hips were far more open than they had been at the beginning of class, but I felt infinitely more calm. My breath was strong and steady, and my hips felt strong and capable. As calm as I felt, savasana after blossoming my lotus felt like a dream.


When I returned to the parking lot after class, I was greeted by a hand-written note secured by my windshield wipers that read, 

"Next time you will be tow away" 

I may be able to get into frog, but maybe I should put a little more work into my parking.