Yoga & the second toe

Have just returned from Iyengar yoga class. Today we worked on getting the second toe to cleave to the big toe (or hallux) and so encourage our inner thighs down towards our inner heels. Not sure whether I've got this right or if I will remember the inner thigh inner heel connection the next lesson. I'm also trying to suck up my pelvic floor while allowing my groins to relax, and encouraging my armpit chest area to come grandly to the front without splaying my floating ribs.

Image by aloofdork via Flickr

Up on the walls of our yoga space we have black and white images of BKS Iyengar in all sorts of impossible asanas: I'm wondering if one of his devotees is adept at Photoshop.

My big problem is my knees. They hurt so much I've decided that I won't do the bent leg poses such as Virabhadrasana II and Parsvakonasana any more. (If you follow the link to "asana" Parsvakonasana's the 5th image in the chart.) Or, I won't even make an attempt to the get the thigh and the knee to a rightangle.

Knees are not my only problem. There's a reluctance in the place between my shoulder blades to take up a very pleasing (to my teachers) concave formation. I can get up into forearm balance and handstand, but without much style or elegance, and there's this humpy back, which some of my teachers like to point out to my classmates as a graphic warning about what they should avoid at all costs.

One rather sad thing, as I look back on my life and my many years of practising yoga (though not, I admit, as assiduously as my teachers would approve), is that I was better at it in the past than I am now. Just last year, in fact, I learned, through dedicated home practice, to do an effortless downward dog (adho mukha svanasana).

This is very nearly the first pose I ever practised. It's a foundation pose. I remember thinking last year, when I mastered the pose: "Everyone's always told me to stretch down my heels, but what they should have been telling me is to stretch out my spine". My teacher noticed my improvement when I did the dog. Praised my ankles. But then I promptly forgot how to do it. And I can't seem to work it out again. It's gone. Enlightenment for two weeks and then an ocean of nothing.