half way there and laziness

This is a bit of a catch up post.

I got navasana over a week ago...only funny part was that I assumed it would be quite a while longer til I got it. It seems that whenever I have the "I will have to wait a while" feeling...that's when I get a new pose. Maybe my teacher is waiting for me to not be expecting a new pose. Navasana is definitely not a pose I like...yet. How to keep the legs straight is an utter mystery to me (as it is in the last part of UHP). Must be a combination of mental laziness and phyiscal lack of strength. I rather suspect mental laziness plays a larger role than I would like to believe. I always think I am not strong enough (..after all, that lift up jumpback seems light years away for me..although I think my chatauranga is fairly solid and the surya jumpbacks are improving) But I wonder if I am limiting myself by thinking this. Anyway, by the third navasana, my legs and even upper body are shaking..and I am definitely sinking a bit towards the ground. It will be interesting to see how this posture develops, and if it does indeed help me in UHP.

A further note on mental laziness: I have been allowing myself to be more "lazy" in UHP when I do it unassisted. That is, I do what I can, and after the first time I fall out of it..I let myself skip the last bend over and touch, if it seems like it will make me fall out of it again. I prefer having the flow of the posture less disturbed with a lot of falls, even if it means not quite doing all of it. I can definitely feel when my ability to pay attention is waning, which is what makes me wobble and fall. For me, this pose seems to need a higher degree of attention than many of the other asanas, although it might also be pointing out how weak my overall focus and attention is right now.

My continued attempts at doing less is still a work in progress, to put it kindly. Anytime my wrist feels better, I return to my full practice (all vinyasas), although I think I should let some of them go for a while, until the wrist is really healed. It is fear of losing any of my much worked for strength that eggs me on to do more than I should.

After some very sweaty practices this weekend at the shala, I finally caved in and ordered a manduka mat and a mysore rug. I felt like the wicked witch of the west on Monday: dissolving into a puddle of sweat. I was slipping all over the place on my jade mat, and I have never really liked the microfiber mat towels - except that they are light when dry and easier to carry to and fro when necessary. In New York, it's all about carrying the least amount of stuff possible. I am really looking forward to having a mat that is not a sponge, though I wonder if I sweat too much to make the rug a practical choice for the summer.