Day 13 (25 minutes)

Ex 1 - Virabhadrasana III (Warrior 3 Posture)
Ex 2 - Astavakrasana (Eight Angled Posture)
Ex 3 - Koundinyasana (Sage Posture)

This is power packed session where you’ll become absorbed in the glorious struggle of doing arm balances! The day also includes a difficult Samasthiti (Basic Standing) exercise where you alternate between standing Uttitha Hasta Padangusthasana (Extended Hand to Big Toe Posture) and Virabhadrasana III (Warrior Pose). Mainly you’ll be introduced to a rarely taught arm balance learning progression. You’ll study how Bakasana (Crane Posture) can lead to a study of Kouninyasana (Sage Pose from 3rd series) and how Bhujapidasana (Arm Pressure Pose) can lead to a study of Astavakrasana (Eight Angles Pose from 3rd series).

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This is more than a challenging but fun recipe it can teach you the strength principle that says one way to win strength is by purposely grappling with asana puzzles that you may never fully solve or master. I sometimes say that your yoga practice only truly comes alive when you accept continual challenge and thus are not afraid of feelings of failure. The asanas that make up the sequences are specifically chosen because studying them seriously places you in a predicament that I refer to as ‘courting the impossible’. Ultimately each and every posture is a vexing paradox, an insolvable body/mind riddle, a puzzle that is necessarily beset with irreconcilable contradiction. The crux of yoga is to give your all to courting the impossible, to freely enter into solving puzzles that have no solution. You do this not because you love frustration or failure but because there truly are no final or explicitly tangible answers to the most interesting, profound, pithy and relevant questions that can proposed about life, the universe, consciousness and self. Postulating questions, contemplating possibilities, working to find solutions is the real point, perceiving the world as a lasting mystery that is worth exploring and inquiring into is what brings knowledge, wisdom and success. The rewards of doing yoga come to you because you continue to strategize, make attempts, reflect, and then try again. The elusive quality of success is predicated on the quality of your efforts, on the attitudes that you adopt towards struggling to know what eludes you and what remains a mystery, and on your acceptance of and indifference to feeling strong or weak, stiff or flexible, inadequate or competent, angry or joyous or fearless or afraid. It is simply an illusion to think that there is some final posture or state of mind that you will achieve one day that will give you lasting peace and all your toils will be over. The illusion of a final success or reward is as unreal, imaginary and unattainable as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow—try as you might you can never even find the end of a rainbow let alone a pot of gold.

Note* Remembering to value the perspective that the exercises are presented in progressions that go from easier to more difficult helps remind you that the work is not black and white either/or. If you get creative you can figure out how to take the first step towards doing virtually any posture no matter how challenging or seemingly foreign. In this strength course when you encounter an exercise or a step that is too difficult for you, go back and review look for a step that works for you. David offers many alternatives but sometimes these options are presented quite fast. You may need to press rewind several times in order to identify just the right step for you. Lastly keep in mind that when done skillfully each step along the learning progression—from easiest to most difficult—has the potential to offer the same benefits and satisfaction. I often say there is NO hierarchy or graduation. Because all the steps have equal value—everyone can derive maximum benefit from exploring and extracting knowledge from the most basic, foundational steps in the progression. This means that one sign of an accomplished yogi is that he/she relishes in dwelling in the most basic positions and actions. The accomplished yogi is a masterful extractor of knowledge and insight from any position. And on the other hand it is easy to get caught up in black and white, either/or thinking. Your aim is to steer clear of ego concerns that lead you to wrongly think that benefits and satisfaction are only found when you can do the final steps of a learning progression. It is amazing how much learning is lost because we think way too far ahead in the steps of a progression and then conclude: “why bother? I’ll never be able to do that.” This strength course can help you know that lining up with each asana learning progression is the way to fulfill your creative and spiritual potential. You learn by being patient and being satisfied with taking one tiny step at a time.