Back to every day being different.  So I went into class with the same mindset as the previous day: I don’t have it, I’d be better served by taking it easy, and I’m sitting in the back row.  Looking back to how those same feelings proved to be incorrect assumptions the day before, I reminded myself to not get into my own head too much and to simply take each posture for what they are that day.

But my hamstrings and hips didn’t cooperate, so my standing series became all about form, and as soon as I tried to make them about depth, I would fail miserably.  My “standing head-to-knee” became about simply standing on one leg because neither leg would lock for more than ten seconds.  My “standing bow” looked more like an archer firing an arrow into the air than at a target.  I will admit that on a warmer day I might have taken some postures off, but I got through it.  Then, after I was in the changing room getting situated, I was overcome with emotion.  So overcome that all I could think about doing was going into the shower and crying my eyes out.  My mind was racing with every negative thought I could have about my own life, my goals and accomplishments, and my biggest mistakes.  In all honesty, it took me nearly an hour to shake the feeling.  In retrospect and reflection I recalled many teachers saying things like “we hold a lot a of tension in our hips,” and “many things ‘come up’ in camel” and I saw that hip tension was a main problem throughout the class.  In “standing bow” and “toe stand” it prevented me from even sniffing the full expression of the posture, and in “floor bow” pushing my hips open too early caused an early fatigue that made it feel as though I had been going too deeply.  It seems that on day seventeen I’ve come to understand that with soreness and overuse, my hips have actually gotten tighter.  Which gives me a new thing to work on in the final two weeks.