Learning to Sit in Lotus: A Little Progress

In my last lotus update, April 18, I let you know where I was beginning. It was pretty sad. I hope my facial expressions adequately portray my discomfort. Since then, I’ve continued my dedicated stretching. I’m still doing many of the stretches in my original plan, but I have incorporated a few more that I think are helping quite a lot.

My daily stretching routine is this:

1. Standing Forward Bend
2. Thread the Needle
3. Bound Angle
4. Pigeon
5. Cow Face
6. Fire Log
7. Seated Forward Bend
8. Standing Forward Bend

I usually spend about 20-30 minutes doing this sequence. And I watch TV while doing so. Normally I’ve got a few The Wonder Years reruns in the DVR. I turn those on and stretch away. I begin and end with forward bends because I like them and find they are relaxing. I suppose they don’t do much for my hip flexibility, but I still like to include them.

Beginning the Lotus–Day 1

I’ve been thinking it’s probably only fair to let you know where I’m beginning with this whole learning how to sit in lotus thing. Well, I’m beginning at the lowest possible point, I think. After going to yoga classes for a little over 8 months now, I’m pretty sure no one on Earth is less flexible than I am.

In these 8 months, though, I’ve noticed significant improvement in flexibility in some areas, so I am confident my hips will eventually follow.

So today marks Day 1 of my blogging documentary on lotus. I will not update every day (how utterly boring that would be), but I’ll try to let you know weekly or bi-monthly how this aspect of my yoga adventures is going.

To begin, some laughable attempts at half lotus.

The right leg.

And one more time for good measure.

And the left leg.

So there you have it. And this is after two weeks of pretty dedicated stretching. I’ve got a long way to go. I hope the pictures in the months to come will gradually get less and less laughable. I’ll keep you posted.

First Quarter Review and Learning to Sit in Lotus

The first quarter of my year about yoga has come to an end, and I feel both good and bad about what I’ve done in the past three months. Let’s look at good first.

I feel good about:

• increased flexibility in my legs.
• increased strength in my arms.
• slight increased flexibility in my back.
• staying fairly consistent in my practice, doing yoga a few times a week.
• improvement in my standing forward fold.

I feel bad about:

• not practicing at home as much as I should (or originally intended).
• very little change in hip flexibility.
• not meditating very often, once or twice a week at best.
• not doing some form of yoga or meditation every day.

In the next quarter, I hope to continue being happy about the former and work on the points in the latter. Specifically, I want to work on hip flexibility. Therefore, I’m going do specific stretches every day to work towards sitting in lotus. Why is this so important to me? Well, I have a few reasons, some yogi-esque, some pure vanity.

Yogi-esque reasons:

• Lotus will improve my meditation practice by improving balance and posture.
• Learning lotus will help me be more in tune with my body, knowing what I am ready for and what I am not.
• Lotus will make other yoga poses easier for me, allowing me to go deeper into the poses.

Vanity reasons:

• I will look cool and like a “serious” yoga person.
• I will prove to myself that I can be bendy (which I have always believed impossible).
• I will show all those 3rd-grade friends on the playground a million years ago that I can sit like that too.

I don’t expect to be able to sit in lotus by the end of the year, but I hope to be much closer. I’m going to follow this tutorial and do these stretches every day in hopes that half-lotus may be possible in December.  I’m hoping my hip flexibility is much less sad by the end of this year and that lotus is a real possibility by the end of next. Here’s to learning lotus. Here goes nothing.

Photo linked to source