Kathy Cooper, Practice 4...staying open while getting stronger

Kathy has been really focusing her adjustments with me on opening my shoulders. This has been demonstrated in bound poses, downward dog, and parasarita padotanasana C particularly. At the same time I'm striving to strengthen my shoulders and upper arms with bakasana and reforming my bad alignment issues in up/down dog and chaturanga...not to mention working on those adjustive skills at chiropractic school. All of this focus on strengthening and opening really plays the opposites. The dance around the point, isn't that yoga...the balance between shiva and shakti? At any rate, this continues to help open up the tension at the root of my neck and help those muscles finally let go after months of being in spasm. As I approach my last Kathy Cooper practice on Friday evening I am realizing that this month has done much to intensify my practice. My practices are sweatier, more energetic, and much, much more focused whether this teacher is there or not. Even though I haven't added any new postures, my understanding and curiosity has grown for each in my practice. I find that my practice times are expanding to longer sessions. A point about this practice of Ashtanga yoga and how it has changed me since I picked it up in January. At my first day Casey mentioned that this practice teaches you to align yourself with the natural cycles in the world around you. He mentioned that this isn't something you force yourself into, it just happens and asked me to just observe if that was true for me. It's becoming very true from the simple waking with the sun and getting sleepy as it sets to noticing diet and balance changes with the moon cycle. Who knew?