Welcome to my online yoga home, with frequent forays into aviation. And allow me to explain the title. When I was a kid at summer camp we sang lots of songs, some around the campfire, some in the dining hall, some while just sitting around somewhere. One of my favorites was \u201cUp in the Air, Junior Birdmen.\u201d As a pilot and a new yogi\u2014a junior yogi\u2014it just struck me as the perfect merger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I began my yoga practice in January 2020, in my early 60s, inspired by two long-time friends, Elaine and Ken. I learned that Elaine and Ken were teaching a yoga class dubbed \u201cGentle Yoga\u201d using something called the \u201cAdaptive Series\u201d at a studio called\u00a0Yoga is Youthfulness<\/a>. It was exactly the kind of class I was looking for: appropriate for beginning and intermediate-level practitioners, using gentle stretches and strengthening to provide gradual improvement in range-of-motion, flexibility, and strength. The location (on my way to work!) and time of day (7 am) were absolutely perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started with just the class, twice a week. (I took a two-week break after only about two weeks of class because of a planned vacation with one of my sons.) Elaine would call an asana, she and Ken would move into it, and I would\u00a0laugh<\/em>: you want me to do\u00a0what<\/em>? This wasn\u2019t with something complicated or an advanced asana like Bird of Paradise (Svarga Dvijasana<\/em>) or Firefly (Tittibhasana<\/em>) or Lord of the Dance (Natarajasana<\/em>), this was with Cow Face (Gomukasana<\/em>) without any binding, just hands on knees. Nope: my legs just didn\u2019t bend that way. Cat-Cow (Marjayasana-Bitilasana<\/em>), sure. But even a Sun Salutation A (Surya Namaskara<\/em>\u00a0A) wasn\u2019t trivial, since my back was kinda stiff. Reverse prayer hands? Hah! And you should have seen the comedic attempt at a headstand (Sirsasana).<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s been one small benefit to me from the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders of our county and state: I\u2019ve taken more time for my yoga practice. At first, I used a video recording of an early version of our practice. Unfortunately, the sound quality was poor enough, even after I tried some audio processing, that it was difficult to follow some of the time. I went looking for something to allow me to practice more often and to experience something new. I checked around for various online recorded sources and didn\u2019t find quite what I wanted. I then found\u00a0Pocket Yoga<\/a>\u00a0and started practicing using\u00a0their app<\/a>\u00a0as a guide (there are iOS, macOS, watchOS, and Android versions). Though I had no teacher to help me by suggesting or making adjustments, it allowed me to continue to learn. Pocket Yoga comes with twenty-seven full practices (three basic varieties, three difficulty levels each, three durations each), and that got me to try some new things and learn more\u2014not to mention come to the mat more frequently. I decided, after a short while, also to get Pocket Yoga Teacher so I could craft my own practices, since I wanted to modify what Pocket Yoga provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seven months into my practice, I\u2019m still not just dropping into Bird of Paradise or Firefly. I can get some semblance of Dancer, though, and I don\u2019t usually fall out of Tree (Vrksasana<\/em>). With some work, I can get my hands into reverse prayer position. Using a headstand bench, I can hold a headstand for several minutes, giving me time to play with different leg positions (with thanks to\u00a0@LeighYogiPilot<\/a>\u00a0for inspiration\u2014not for the handstands, but for the balance work that different leg positions in headstand provide) and work on refining my balance (thanks, also,\u00a0@StelaSulzdorf<\/a>, and\u00a0@TyLandrumYoga<\/a>). Progress continues!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey will be long, and the journey has been enjoyable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Welcome to my online yoga home, with frequent forays into aviation. And allow me to explain the title. When I was a kid at summer camp we sang lots of songs, some around the campfire, some in the dining hall, some while just sitting around somewhere. One of my favorites was \u201cUp in the Air, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jryogi.rhinoaviation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jryogi.rhinoaviation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jryogi.rhinoaviation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jryogi.rhinoaviation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jryogi.rhinoaviation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jryogi.rhinoaviation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38,"href":"https:\/\/jryogi.rhinoaviation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jryogi.rhinoaviation.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Navigation<\/h5>\n\n\n\n