MissBelle

I am so very grateful for your thoroughness in diagnosing the issue!  Thank you!

> Do you go to a script-only studio?
> If yes, then are you ‘charging your body toward the mirror’ as your modus operandi?

I do, but they allow a lot of flex with the dialogue. “Charging” is said but not highlighted.  There’s more of an emphasis on “kick up and back.”
> Can you tell me if the thigh of your upper leg is parallel to the floor? Ask someone to look for you one day after class or look at yourself in the mirror when you’re standing alongside the mirror. Or is your thigh at a 30 or 45 degree angle to the floor, angling upward? Generally your lower half of the leg tends to be either parallel to the back wall or coming forward toward your body. Which is it for you? And maybe give me some idea of that shape or angle.

Noooooowhere close to the splits 🙂 Thigh is at about a 30 degree angle with the leg close to parallel to the wall. I can see my whole foot over my head.
> How high is your arm in front of you?

This is another big area of emphasis at my studio– we’re asked to keep “shoulder to chin” a lot, so that’s where I try to keep it.
> What is the shape of your back? Often the shape is a curve from hips to waist and then waist to chest is parallel to the floor.

That’s the shape– a curve below, then waist to chest is parallel.
> When you are in the pose, are you extending the arm forward parallel to the floor as a matter of course? Does that what you do every time you are in the pose as soon as you enter?

It does tend to be parallel, yes. But mostly I am focusing on “shoulder to chin.”
> When you say you are struggling, is that a figurative expression, or are you able to locate the source of your struggle? Are you struggling to maintain balance at all?

I do fall out, but overall my balance has improved over the past 3 years since I started practicing. When I fall out, I usually spend the entire set falling out and then starting over, but I would say 70% of the time I’m fairly steady. Mostly I spend my time trying to figure out how to get that hip down and the abs parallel.

Again, many thanks!

Thanks so much for getting back to me. I really appreciate that you’re concerned with this issue and want to help me get to the bottom of it.

Can you explain to me what you are doing with your hands? Are the fingers interlocked right to the ‘webbing’?
Fingers are interlocked for the most part, but sometimes they slip away from the webbing at the end of the pose.

Are your thumbs crossed too so that your hands are clasped together under your foot?
Thumbs too! 🙂

Is your standing leg locked out? For how long in a 60 second set? For how long in a 30 second set? Feel free to tell me if you manage several (or however many) seconds and then have to recommit. Where are your eyes focused? (You mentioned you know you need to look up, so where exactly are you looking when you are not doing that?)

That’s one of the parts of this pose I really concentrate on and feel like I can do fairly OK on. So my eyes are focused “up” at the mirror, on the reflection of my locked knee.

Can you explain to me please what you meant by ‘I try to bring my shoulders down’?
I do my best to practice “elbows in the back pocket” so that there’s no hunching. I try to keep the shoulders away from my ears to reduce tension.

Thanks so much!

Is it the strength of your legs or is it actually that your foot is sliding on a slippery surface?

That’s an excellent observation, and one I kept in mind during today’s studio vinyasa class. I was surprised to realize that I was indeed holding downward dog with almost no slipping at the very top of class, but was slipping more towards the end after I had been sweating.

And as I looked at non-skid surfaces to use with my mat for my vinyasa classes (I still prefer just a beach towel for use with HYD classes), I read that some of the cotton rugs available are actually pretty close to what practitioners have been using for quite some time. I’m glad to hear this isn’t a new problem!

Thanks so much for your astute advice.

Thanks so much for your reply, Gabrielle. I can see that it will take a while for me to reshape my muscle memory and “unlearn” all those habits. I think what I will do is try to go down to where I can feel the muscles working but still come up properly, and then work on getting lower, for as you mentioned, there are many elements to keep track of here. Form before depth 🙂

This is what’s so terrific about this series! There’s SO MUCH going on and always something to work on– it’s the same postures but I never get bored 🙂

(sorry, double post!)