!anaj ,em s'taht

I’ve just realized that I’ve never written a Yoga post so far, although I’ve got the habit of gushing about it at any given opportunity. It’s not that I’m a terribly advanced or devoted Yogini, certainly not when it comes to actual practice: I tend to speak about the benefits of Yoga more than I’m actually practising it (or at least that is the impression that I sometimes get myself).

I normally practise 15 to 30 minutes of Pranayama, in particular breathing exercises, in the mornings. I would like to do more of Hatha Yoga, but somehow that doesn’t come to pass at the moment (three to four sessions a month seems to be the most that I manage to do right now.

Anyhow, as I was speaking about a breakthrough: I took my first (Hatha) yoga lesson in November 2000 (at one of the German Yoga Vidya centres which I highly recommend to everyone who is interested in Yoga as a holistic practice – those who look at Yoga as a recent trend in physical workout should stick to their local gym).

And today, i.e. more than six years later, I managed for the first time to do Sirsana (the headstand) properly. I got into it without any help, and managed to stand in it for roughly 5-10 secondsand without the support of a wall to lean against

That’s apparently not me in the picture, but an illustration from the Yoga Vidya pages.

Other minor achievements of the day: I timed the seconds that I managed to hold my breath during Kapalabhati (a breathing technique). Mind you: Yoga isn’t a competition, and the aim of Kapalabhati is not to hold your breath for as long as you can – according to the concept of Ahimsa, you should avoid any injury, both afflicted upon yourself or on others. But I was just curious, because the exercise went pretty well today. I started with 38 secons, then going to 50 and 57, and in my last round, I was able to hold my breath for 1 minute and 9 seconds