Day Nine

Day Nine

Focus: Seated Forward Fold, Paschimottanasana

Reading: Chapter Nine of One Simple Thing

Mouth: The Yoga Bible (pages 118 & 119)

Anatomy: The Yoga Anatomy Coloring Book, Pose by Pose (pages 66 & 67)

Instructions:

Welcome to Day Nine! Let's forward fold again, but this time seated.

  1. Read Chapter Nine of One Simple Thing.

  2. Then, color page 66-67 of The Yoga Anatomy Coloring Book Pose by Pose. Practice the pose after coloring.

  3. Finally, read aloud the cueing for this pose from pages 118 & 119 of The Yoga Bible. The instructions to keep my legs engaged and flat against the ground while moving forward with my sternum were helpful to me today.


Bonus: Continue to think about the mula banda as you fold forward today in Paschimottanasana.

Extra credit: Consider the breath today as something which animates. One Simple Thing discusses in chapter nine how breath appears in the Bible. For me, I was always persuaded by Walt Whitman's discussion of the breath from Song of Myself. Consider these lines:

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the pass- ing of blood and air through my lungs,

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.


My Journal Entry from Day Two:

From One Simple Thing:

  • "However, it is much easier to start with controlling the breath than to start with the mind, because are breath is easier to manipulate" (page 152).

  • One of my teachers once said that they practice most of their yoga during their commute because it is a time when they can sit and focus on their breath. They also said that it was breathing in these times that allowed him to then come to the class as a person who lived yoga.

From today's yoga class:

  • Key Words: Wind/Breath

  • Today's outdoor yoga class with Dublin from Harlem Yoga Studio was wonderful for my upper body which was tight from kayaking yesterday. We did eagle-wrapped arms in several positions and I believe it really loosened me up. Even though I was tired and hesitate to go, I'm glad I went! I just told myself that I would do only what I felt I was able to consider how much physical assertion happened yesterday. So grateful that yoga allows for this kind of flexibility.