Day 3 - Yoga

I normally never post anything about yoga classes - primarily because there's not that much interesting that happens and is worth reporting.  Once you get past the shock of the first class and the heat and humidity (which is certainly worthy of a post), and then you get to the point where you can go through the entire class without a break (worth of another post) - occasions are few and far between that are worth posting about.

But today happened to be one of those days!  Over the past year (holy crap - I've been doing yoga for a year now!), my flexibility improvements have been drastic and obvious.  I credit yoga a huge amount with being able to remain injury-free up until the marathon.  However, there are two places that I find I still struggle with - hips and knees (in that order).  For those two reasons, one particular pose has always been a far off dream to be able to do - the toe stand pose.

To try and describe it would be a waste of time, so here is what it looks like:


There is a process to be followed to get into it, starting with bring your foot up to your thigh, dropping your knee, and leaning forward.  Over time, I've been able to lean forward, with my foot on my thigh, enough that instructors have encouraged me to fall forward in an attempt to slip into the next phase of the pose.  Problem is that I've always been paranoid about my knee - not because I've had knee issues - but I've been paranoid I'd screw something up, torque it and rip my ACL right in two.

For whatever reason, today I decided to throw caution to the wind, and lean forward.  To my amazement, I was then able to bend my supporting knee and sort of get into the pose.  I say sort of because I didn't look anything like the above picture.  My leg wasn't really horizontal (my knee was higher than my ankle), there was no way I was balancing on my toes on one foot (I was balancing with the help of my hands on my side), and my back was nowhere near straight (I was hunched over like a leprechaun).  BUT I managed to be in sort of a sitting position, so I'll take it!