“Om Suryaaya Namaha…”: Crazy positions and touching your toes

Up early again for a morning of contorting myself into odd shapes and breathing unnaturally for long periods of time. That said, I think I really do enjoy yoga. The more I do it, the more I seem to enjoy it too.

Jodhpur Sunrise

The mornings are actually starting to quite chilly now, with Bharat apparently being amazed I don’t want to wear a jumper. I sense his amazement could actually lead me in future to not wear a jumper even if I wanted to, in a kind of English northerner defiant “Ha, call this cold? I’ll show you cold” kinda way. The sunrises only seem to be getting prettier as a result. To be honest, I really struggled initially this morning – I must have yawned about 4 times during the warmup – but once you realise you can do soemthing you couldn’t yesterday you suddenly perk up. This morning I managed to do the lotus without any pain at all! Minor victory for Liv over otherwise cranky body and another amateur yoga tickbox filled. Usually my heels dig into my legs, or my hips protest in that shooting manner than only bones and muscle can, but today I had neither- hurrah! My legs still don’t sit perfectly on the ground but I’m getting there, one crazy position at a time. The Butterfly position (imagine like you were about to sit crosslegged but then let the soles of your feet touch one another, and then flap them up and down like wings) has told me that one leg is distinctly more flexible than the other, but I’m working on it. We also did some breathing exercises this morning which were Ha-aaaard. Breathing in for one position and holding, breathing out for the next and holding. The breathing in wasn’t really difficult at all, we can all hold our breath right? But exhaling, and trying to then force your body to hold it whilst stretching as far as you physically can bordered on excruciating at points.

“Ea-Gy” Bharat tells us, “in one month we go hard”. Ea-Gy is the way a lot of Indians tend to say ‘easy’ by the way, something to do with the consonant sound but I still haven’t figured out why. For weeks I thought Manju was trying to tell me examples of things, so would listen attentively, only to be met with a quizzical look! I’m definitely ready to try something new in yoga, but after asking Bharat to show us his favourite positions, I’m pretty sure we’ve got a long way to go yet…