it should feel effortless

My teacher likes to say that about the practice. I think I have a lot of years til I can decide if that statement is true. Now, there is a lot of effort in my practice: in the asanas, in the breath (especially) and in my mind to focus on what I am doing. On Friday, I lost track of how many surya b's I had done, so I did an extra to be sure, not an easy task for me.

Makes me wonder what exactly she meant by "effortless".  In my feldenkrais trainings, we hear that all time "try to make the movement take less effort". With feldenkrais, you focus on becoming aware of the unnecessary effort you put into movements and, as a result, rewire your brain to move more easily. At the end of a lesson involving lifting your leg..you can find that your leg feels a whole lot lighter than it did at the beginning. I wonder if this is what i might one day feel within my yoga practice.

Generally, once I start my practice, it does (sort of) propel itself along (ok, I do wish my teacher wouldn't find me right away for UHP, but other than that one). I feel positively lazy since the injury, not that I am not trying, but I have stopped trying to jump forward and back in the suryas, and to lift up (hah) and then after plopping back down, try to jump back to chatauranga. There is more to the practice than those pesky transitions which either hurt my ankle or wrists....the trouble with being more bendy than strong either in body or in breath. And no extra-for fun- vinyasa classes for a while. That can wait.

Today was the first day that I got my head to the ground (plop!) in prasarita A. I lost the whole feeling of the pose after that, and thought I might tumble over. I didn't manage it with any of the other prasaritas after that. It is so funny how the ground, the goal, is so close to my head, but I have no idea where I am in relation to it, and then when I get there, instead of a feeling of accomplishment, I feel ungrounded and not sure of what I am doing.

Today was also my first practice taping my leg to give it a little support. I guess it helped, so hard to tell about these things. The kinesio tape arrives this week and now that my massage therapist has shown me how to tape my leg..I do hope that it helps. I would like to be able to jump back again this spring or summer, among other things.