Day 14 : Monday Blues.

Date : October 14, Monday
Day : 14

OK. So after that grand promise to myself that I am going to do 10 surya namaskars before every class to prepare for the "108 Surya Namaskars" this Saturday, I discover on Sunday night that it is that time of the month for me. Now usually I do not practice yoga during these days, but this month was different, I was doing the hot journey. I read up in a few forums and realized that it is not bad to practice yoga when you are having your periods. So I didn't cancel my flow class with Daphne and slept with the alarm on for 6 AM. 

Almost changed my mind in the morning, but made it to class. Either it was sleep or laziness or pain ( I would like to believe the last excuse), but i didn't stick to my 10 surya namaskars promise. I instead slept a little (20 mins) before Daphne walked into the class. Surprisingly, I didn't find it tough at all. No no, what I mean to say is, not tougher than what I find a flow class to be. It was still a really intense and tough practice, but my condition didn't make it any more tougher. The class was excellent as usual and woke me and my body up and prepared it for the week ahead! Of course, the fact that Tuesday was a holiday made it a lovelier week .

The pose that I am going to talk about today is Anjaneyasana, more commonly known as the crescent or high lunge pose. 



(Image Courtesy :  Wikipedia) It's called crescent because of the shape that the asana resembles. And it's Sanskrit name Anjaneya-asana comes from a story about an fearless woman called Anjana, the mother of Lord Hanuman in Hindu mythology. Anjana wanted a child and prayed daily for the miracle of a child. The Anjaneyasana is named after her spiritual penance, and is a deep kneeling lunge, that stretches the psoas muscles that runs from tje middle of the spine to the inner thigh. Our daily habit for sitting for long periods of time, leads to chronically locked psoas. Supposedly it is closely related to the fight or flight response in humans and the psoas is generally where we hide our fear. In opening the psoas physically, we shed our fears and move into a state of fearlessness.

The story is, that one day when Anjana was in deep meditation, the Wind God, Vayu who really admired her, decided to help her out and sent a few grains of blessed rice with his bird friends. These birds then dropped those grains into Anjana's hands, she was in Anjali Mudra, but instead of pressing her hands completely, her fingers formed a shape like a bud. Knowing what this was, she ate the grain and gave birth to Anjaneya (son of Anjana) who was half human and half God, with Vayu as his father.  

Of course, how he came to called Hanuman and fulfill his destiny in assisting Lord Ram's mission is a completely different story and maybe I will tell it sometime during the course of this blog, because there is something called a Hanumanasana, which is something that I haven't yet gotten anywhere close to getting into.

So the Anjeneyasana, makes her somewhat feel and breathe in Anjana's fearless energy as we push our psoas and hip towards the floor while folding our palms in anjali mudra towards the sky. It is very commonly used in flow classes and especially Daphne's. And it can be quite challenging to stay in it for long periods of time. It is also used in the sun salutation sequences.

So that was my Monday flow. I was feeling very sick towards the end of the day. My fever and cough and running nose came back in the office AC and I left office by 2 PM to head home and get some rest. The thought of a mid-week holiday did of course make me feel much better towards the evening :)

Namaste