Commitment

Ok, I've been thinking about this idea of commitment a lot since Brigette posted the first blog on it and what does that mean to me?!?

I've been committed to an almost daily practice, at least 5-6 days per week for what will be 9 years in March, so how does that fit, not really anything I could come up with to write about. Until my practice this morning.

I was doing an Eye of the Tiger practice, which is something that was laid out by John Friend in a specific order to optimise the use of the Universal Principles of Alignment and open up your body - probably more open than its ever been. One day you can focus on backbending, ab work, hip openers, arm balances and standing poses, another day forward bends, inversions and standing poses (always with the damn standing poses!) and today was a day that I was doing the former.

So I go through Sun Salutes, handstands (about 5 different ways) and forearm balance. Did I forget to mention that you always start with these when doing Eye of the Tiger? Ok, now you know. Then I go to standing poses, arm balances, abs, hips and I'm about to start backbends, somewhere in there is where I usually poop out-I mean I've been going for an hour and a half already, but then the commitment idea came into my head. Am I committing to this as my practice today? No, I'm wanting to poop out, so I did it and committed to finishing. Much to my surprise I feel better now and more invigorated than I have in weeks and was able to do some of the things more fully than ever, even being able to do the hardest (in my opinion) of the backbends, Mandalasana. You go up into a headstand and then drop back to Viparita Dandasana, basically headstand in a backbend and then walk or run around your head, both directions. We did this in the Practice class this past week but I did it at home by myself. I had to committ yet again to working on my Eka Pada Rajakapotasana and was able to get my foot, in two different ways.

Now the point of all of this is not that I was able to perform these asanas but that by committing to doing my best in them I was able to get deeper into myself and deeper into a connection with reality and feel more open to bigger and better things and my back feels fracking awesome!

I hope to hear some more from more of you soon!

Keith