Touching The Knees

I have been practicing yoga at home since the lock-down. Initially I did a lot of rope jumping or skipping as we call it. I even mastered the art of cris-cross but after some time the rope broke and I got kind of bored jumping ropes (though I think it's an excellent aerobic exercise). So I shifted to practicing yoga. 

I daresay that I made some progress with certain poses. The basic salamba sarvangasana is almost cracked and I can raise my legs straight almost from the shoulder now. It's now a matter of practice and time before I am able to hold the pose for 5 minutes. As of now, it's about half a minute perhaps :-) 

I can rotate the legs 180 degrees to the back of my head without any support and get into the sarvangasana pose from there. When I do the halasana the body indeed looks like a "hal". I can sit in padmasana for ten minutes on each side - meaning left leg up first and then right.

I was also trying to get to perfection with the front bend pose called janusirasana where you stretch your legs out, hold the back of your feet with the hands and then bend down to touch the knees with your forehead first, followed by your nose and then the chin. 

After trying every day to get there for about two months now and making progress bit by bit, last evening I finally first touched the knees with my forehead. I felt such a sense of accomplishment to just brush against the knees. The progress is like the hour hand of the clock. It is moving but you cannot see it unless you look after an hour. 

I know I have a long way to go before I reach even 80 per cent of perfection but it is definitely a milestone. 

I have yet to be able to hold the back of my feet with one hand holding the wrist of the other. I have yet to bend the back almost totally straight from the pelvic region. I have yet to flare the elbows out fully as my head touches the knees. But I am getting there. And I will get there. There is no rush.  

Another pose that I want to perfect and I am currently working on is baddha konasana or the butterfly pose. I am close but not quite there. I give this pose about five minutes every evening. In this pose the knees should touch the floor and one should be able to bend forward with the spine straight and touch the floor in front with the forehead. The knees are almost there but not quite. Bending forward I can bring the forehead within about four inches of the ground. I will probably take a couple of months more to get there if I do it every single day. Let me see how it progresses.