It’s not so often that I do write at the moment, it has been much lately so when I come home it is food, fix with the household and then bed to be ready for a new day.

I started another 30 day challenge with the studio. Today is day 12.

This challenge is such a different challenge from the others that I have done.

It all started a couple of months ago when I felt that my lower back and hips started to open up. That area has been so tight that my 2 m tall, former basket-ball player with hands like a toilete lid, chiropractor hasn’t been able to adjust it. He has been using massage, stretching and acupunture, but nothing has helped. Hip area stuff and stuck as a cement-block. Something started and then came the pain. The pain has been there in every class, like little knifes digging around in almost every posture. Can you imagen Wind Removing or Half Tortoise beeing painful? Camel, Triangle, Balancing Stick or Stadning Head to knee is understandable.

It has been tough, it has been painful, it has been emotional.

Slowly it has become better, less painful and I have become stronger.

Yesterday I did a double, 7 am and 6 pm and in the evening class something poped in the hip area. When walking home from the bus it was so strange to walk, like the hips didn’t really know how to do this motion anymore. It was so totally wiered.

Today the hips where sore and I feel that I do walk a bit different than before. During class it was amazing, the first class in a long time that was totally pain free. This is what I have been working towards for so long now that I had almost forgotten how it was to have class where it feels like I am working in the postures to a greater depth and not meeting the pain and having to breath though and into it. Pain releases something in the body that, at least for me, makes me quite a bit overwhelmed.

I guess it will be a bumpy road from here and I will still have classes meeting the knives but it feels like I am over the huge mountain and it will only get better from here.

It’s been some of those crazy weeks again. Lots of work, with the totally moment for everybdoy to be able to take responsibility for their actions. My learning is that I have to and can say: No. No we can’t develop this in the short timespan that you give us if you want some kind of quality to go with it. I like my job and as long as I learn something everyday it is a great job.

I alone are the one who chooses how I feel about all the things that happens around and with me.

During this week I only had the possibility to go to one class and it was 8 days since the previous class. That is not my normal routine. But it happens when things at work piles up.

After a kind of rough standing series and the painful spine strengthening, in one of the the Savasanas my body was so happy and I just layed there with a huge smile on my face. Then the little man on the other shoulder came out and wispered in my ear: How can you allow yourself to be happy, it is 8 days since your last class, your back hurts, your stomach hurts and that is by definition the entire you – be miserable!

I could at that moment choose to be miserable. Did I? No, I choose to be happy.

It would have been easier to be miserable as then I could have skipped some postures, layed there and feeling pity for myself in my miserable state, and ofcourse, I did consider this, but somewhere deep inside me I choose and decided, No I will not go that path today, today I will choose to go the happy path.

Every day and every moment there is the possibility to choose how to feel, if we can choose the happy path once it is so much easier the next time.

I have come to the conclusion that it is brilliant!

First some background.
I don’t know how it is in the rest of the world but in Sweden we don’t like to be loud where people can hear us say “stupid” things. So if a teacher would say “Say: Mama give me money” very few would say it out load and you really se how everybody gets embarressed. So then many teachers skip it.

But think of it.
Palm facing up – If you do that you open yourself up to something. So often we think that we can handle everything ourselves and don’t need any help from anybody.
Mama – Is somebody that cares for your and wants the absolutely best for you. It doesn’t have to be your physical mama, just a person that cares for you.
Give me mone – Obviously, please give me something of great value that I do need. Most of us need money and it is a great word to use for something with value as money in itself holds a value.
You’re holding the money in your hand – By asking for it, you got it.

It is so beautiful.
I am opening up myself so that someone that cares a lot for me can give me something of great value, if I just ask for it, and I will allow it to happen.

So truely beautiful.

It’s been a while since I last wrote, it has happened a lot since then.

I have moved. I am one of those who is very strongly rooted in my place where I live. Moving is like digging me up with the roots and then there is this vacum when I am nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Packing the last stuff, getting everything to work smoothly with the old owner of the house as they moved out the same day and the people moving into our appartment moving in the next day.
On top of this it was very stressfull at work.

I tried to keep up with my yoga practice but it is clear, how it is in life that is how it is on the mat.

The week before we moved Brandy and Kasper had a “Meet the Champions seminar” at the studio over two evenings. I even had written the wrong starting time in my calender for the second day so I missed Kaspers class. Bummer.

The new house is great, I like it more and more for each day and now after a month I have started to dig down my roots in a suburb of Stockholm. How about that? We still have some stuff to fix, like putting up some lamps and all the paintings and things like that. The stepsons room was purple so that room we are redecorating this week. The room that we have as our office is dark blue and will be the next room that we redecorate.

I found this in the Salvations Army Second Hand shop yesterday, it’s made in one piece of wood and I just get so happy watching it. I haven’t decided where it will stand in the house yet, but it will get a good spot.

I have learned a lot about myself during this period. That is good, as isn’t that what life is all about.

I’m also back on my mat to a more regular practice again and I have decided (It could have been a new years resolution…) that it’s OK to miss a day of yoga every now and then. It is OK not to practice daily, 5 days a week is sufficient and still very much.

Before the practice becomes beautiful it will be therapeutic.

Hurray for the therapeutic effects of the yoga!

In 4 weeks we will move to our new place.

Sometimes after class I feel this tiredness in the body, like I can’t move I just have to be totally still even if the brain is energetic. It’s like I don’t get enough Savasana in class and the body needs much more rest for the things that are happening in the body.

Welcome back strength!

My understanding of Koppo is when the bones are stacked on top of eachother in a perfect way. The muscles then are what helps the bones to move around and if a person whould stand still no muscles would be needed as the structure supports itself.

Within the Feldenkrais they speak alot of the same, the bones should be the base and the muscles are there to support.

I was thinking of this the other day in my yoga class when coming out of Rabbit. Then I had worked my back muscles nice and loose on both the front and back and I got this sensation when there was one point there was no need to use the muscles, I could just sit there straight and effortless.

I have no other word on this feeling than Koppo.

This last weeks has been crazy, intense and challenging.

I did do the studios 30 day challenge, and you should know that a challenge is a challenge. I have done many challenges before but nothing like this. But a challenge should be a challenge as that is the name of it.

- Starting to learn how to stand properly on my feet again
Standing on the entire foot.
Feet feel Wow, we can start to open up – Painful
Knee goes happy no pain any more.
Hips can’t stay in the same position, start to open up – Painful

- Starting to learn how to breath and allow the heart to beat
Traveling to London and catching a cold
Becomming sick, one day of sinus infection, one day of ear infection, one day of very high fever, one day of a crazy runny nose, one day of crazy caugh. Then the caugh stayed with me in class for nearly two weeks. All the moist air started of the caugh and together with learning how to breath it cramped in the chest.
Chest is opening up – painful
Lungs has found new, unused spots – painful
Haert beating as a techno song gone crazy – scary

I finished this crazy challenge so weak and frail, but I finished it!

It has been an exciting, thrilling and breathtaking challenge with all this changes in my body.

I am now starting to ascend on the other side of this and I am so happy that I went to class every day, digged deep, and allowed myself to be week, to go through all the pain and to let all the oxygen move into those small forgotten areas in my body.

Im also so happy for all the support and love that I have felt from instructors, fellow yogis and my family during this weeks. Thank you!

Tomorrow is a new day where I will be a little stronger than today.

My knee is getting better and my legs are getting stronger. Learning how to stand again is nice and now it feels good when I balance right. It has been painful, in the foot, in the knee and in the hip. The other day the pain culminated and now it feels less every class. Now it is just the hip, it cracks and pops at times and it has something in the hip is very tight. It will loosen up but it has to scream for some more time it feels like. But that is ok, going from pain everywhere between the navel and the thighs in Triangle to pain in a specific place is good.

And the breathing?
I am breathing and have lots of energy, then I got a cold or if it is just some old junk that has to leave as I have changed the breathing pattern. In any case it has been strange, I have had one day of sinus infection, one day of ear infection, 2 days of fever, one day of feeling better, one day of dry cough and today one day of phlegm cough. Hopefully it will be gone tomorrow so I can have my strength back and work whole heartly into everything again.