A Partner Yoga Session

Last night I had great, relaxing and fun, time doing partner yoga with Andy. I've been trying to practice the Wide-Legged Forward Bend (Prasarita Padottanasana), but I'm not quite there yet.

(Side note on Sanskrit names: I can actually recognize the Hindi words in a lot of the Sanskrit names of poses. In Half Moon Pose, Ardha Chandrasana, for example, adha means "half" in Hindi, and chand means "moon." Neat!)

Back to my Wide-Legged Forward Bend. I've been doing a variation of this for years, especially after running, to stretch my hamstrings. But I could never quite get my head all the way to the ground. Finally, exasperated by my inflexibility, Andy decided to help me. After years of martial arts practice, he's surprisingly limber, although a little rusty. ;) So we went through a series of poses he used to do to warm up. They were almost all yoga poses! We did:

Camel pose
Bow pose (need to work on this!)
Half Lord of the Fishes pose (my favorite)
Hero pose
Half Moon pose
Wide-Legged Forward Bend
Tree pose
Bound Angle Pose
Wide-Angled Seated Forward Bend
Head-to-knee pose
Reclining Hero Pose (I sucked at this!!)

After about 30 or 40 minutes, I was able to to a full Wide-Legged Forward Bend and touch my head to the floor!!!! Awesome. I was so amazed. I suggested we do this every day. At Andy's blank stare, I revised my statement: how about we do this once a week?