Hayley Izzard

"wanting to roll down, freedom, spaces of the spine, awareness of spine, learn the body to relax, length in the neck, open". These were all thoughts, desires, things I was thinking about and took away with me from the session today.  The exercise of my partner, DJ, walking her fingers down my spine really helped to open up spaces in the vertebrae of my spine. The imagery of lengthening of the neck and head travelling towards the ceiling really helped to make subtle changes that you could visually see. When in crouch position with my arms behind me, and with DJ touching my back to help me breathe, and the idea of breathing the air into my back really worked; I could feel that happening. I found the position of crouching over my legs with my arms behind me more comfortable than sitting cross legged. Comparing the two positions, sitting cross legged restricted me feeling much happening with the breath. During learning our sequence of landing exercise no 1 - ...

First session back after a year out - nice simple lesson of revisiting basics ie, 'tendu' - making sure to brush the floor with the foot, keeping hips still and square, making sure not to lift anywhere but the leg. I notice I always engage my bum muscles, which helps to engage my core, even if its not strong or fully, so I don't think I do move my hips.  sidebends - I think I was over extending, wasn't really sure how far to bend over but not to move my lower back, wasn't sure how it was meant to feel. Also doesn't have to be a big movement, as long as it's controlled.  ronde de jambe - means circular movement of the leg, make sure to extend at more of a 45 degree angle rather than 90 degress as I was trying to attempt, This opens the hip, and I must work to my own limits. 

Upward Dog yogajournal.com/poses/474 Downward Dog: yogajournal.com/poses/491 Today was the first session of Yoga I'd done since last year, so I felt how much my body needs work again after how long it has been. I'm so glad we worked on more of the technique of Ashtanga Primer Yoga as I spent nearly all my time in 1st year not knowing if I was doing the warm up sequence, ie: downward dog/upward dog correct or safely.  I realised the very small details made a lot of difference for example, when in downward dog, it's best to keep your arms at a 90 degree angle and not let your back sink to the floor, when moving through from upward dog to downward dog. I always did this in 1st year, and as a result of correcting this, it enables the spine to lengthen and not contort. Even the small detail of rolling through the toes correctly, it put me in a position to lengthen the spine, which in turn, meant my legs weren't stretching too far back for upward do...

Pictured above were all thoughts that sprang to mind, and feelings from this session. We focused mainly on 'getting to know each other' exercises, and were thrown slightly out of our comfort zone, or mine at least, by working an improvised score of walking in the space, pausing and saying something about ourselves and any memories we had at a certain age. These were my memories: " When I was 12, I went to Tenerife with my parents. We went to loads of outings, one of them being a dolphin show. This was the holiday I got food poisoning and it's significant because of that." " When I was 18, I had a hall party with family and friends." "When I was 5, I went to a caravan site with my family in Wales. I remember my aunt pushing me down the slide, this is one of my earliest memories." When I was 15, I got my first boyfriend, lasted for 6 months." It was a nice session to just reflect and be made aware of the person...