yoga: tuesday's practice

i'm lucky enough to have a yoga studio five minutes from my house but i also have a fairly healthy home practice.  my favorite classes are on wedesnday nights and saturday mornings.  that leaves a few work nights for my home practice.  having a home practice is challenging.  i'm not a teacher so i'm not sure how to sequence a home practice.  i've done some private sessions and come up with sequences.  however, that much repetition gets monotonous.  to get around this i've started jotting down the flows from my saturday morning class in a notebook.  i replicate these classes at home and that helps keep my home practice fresh. 

another challenge of having a home practice is motivation.  i work a typical 40 hour work week so i'm not moving mountains over here or anything but by the time i get home, i'm tired.  it is difficult to change into my yoga clothes and get on the mat.  my couch and book always look so inviting.  sometimes the couch and book win out and my opinion that's okay.  other times i talk myself into it and away i go.  a few times i've stopped after getting started because my heart isn't in it.  for the most part i'm always glad i did it even if it is a fight to get through. 

and onto tuesday's practice.  yesterday was a battle to get started but it ended well.  perseverance and expectations seemed to be the words to define my practice.  instead of setting an intentions, i try and come up with a word or two to describe my practice at the end.  perseverance because i moved through my mental block and got it done.  expectations because i was curious about how crow and headstand were going to go after this weekend's successes.  in crow, my positioning felt right.  the elbows and legs were doing what they were supposed to be doing but that second foot didn't want to leave the floor.  it hovered and that had to be good enough.  as for my headstand i had a similar issue.  the second foot didn't want to leave the ground.  my big fear in headstand is falling over.  i know it isn't an original fear but it is a fear nonetheless.  i don't like feeling out of control or off balance.  getting that second foot up made me feel out of control so i knew to stop.  learning to trust my body and how it differs from day to day is big for me.  yesterday wasn't a failure for my challenge poses.  it was a step along the way.  today will be something completely new and different and that is what keeps bringing me back to my mat.