I love timing my poses through my breath instead of counting. It makes me mindful of my breathing, and helps me focus on my body.
I've noticed that yoga hasn't helped my back pain at all, which I believe is caused by scar tissue from radiation caused by my breast cancer treatments. The worst of the back pain is just behind the lung on my cancer side. But somehow the yoga makes the back pain less of a concern to me. My body feels like it's getting some understanding and acceptance of itself, and that's a very calming feeling.
The really nice thing about the Rodney Yee yoga is that he emphasizes mediation. The last 15 minutes or so of the practice are dedicated to relaxation poses, and if my body can't take a particular pose for too long, I'm able to do my meditating with the next pose. I feel that I'm learning alternative meditation positions. It's nice because I find that in my life my ability to meditate is directly connected with my spirituality as well as my entire attitude about life in general.
This morning when doing my headstand, I discovered that I can get my body into one particular position where maintaining the headstand is effortless. On either side of that position I either fall back against the wall, or fall forward onto my arms. So my goal will be to keep praticing so that I can reproduce that position reliably every time. I will stick to doing one headstand of 2-4 breaths duration each practice session so as not to strain my neck. I truly believe that learning to do this will do wonderful things for my overall well-being. This is one of the aspects of scuba diving that I believe causes such a calming effect. The other aspect of scuba diving is the pressurization, which I think must have huge positive effects on the body. I just don't know an easy way to simulate that on-land though.
