Amazingly, after the knee injury, using yoga to heal, I found I could take on the difficult poses-- headstand, scorpion, difficult variations of the headstand -- with control. But found it so immensely difficult to do basic things like the cat stretch, fish, locust (I had to use a bolster under the thighs for the locust since lifting the legs scrunched my knee painfully), double leg drops, leg cycling; even the cobra gave me immense pain. I still cannot do the surya namaskar and restarted it slowly only last week; I cannot sit cross-legged or even dream of lotus for at least a few weeks:( Sudden movements jerks the knee,wrenching it with a shock. Walking on Bandra's potholed, up-down pavement challenges it a lot; but I do it deliberately to see that the leg does not lose its ability to take on that special challenge; I restarted balancing poses only this weekend, holding the warrior, crane for half a minute. Even the simplest of poses, the one-legged prayer pose, hurts the knee quite a bit, but I am extending the time in these...
So, yes, I am revisiting the sweet simple poses and find that not just for me, but even those without any knee issue, some cat stretches are giving trouble. None of my group is able to still find the balance in the leg holding cat stretch... Same side. Here I am trying holding the opposite leg with opp hand. That will be even more difficult to teach:) Yes,simple is tough...
Cat stretch advanced version: Reaching the opposite hand for opposite leg... Can be very very challenging in terms of balance and body alignment, and also intensifying the pose by lifting the chin up.
What u need for this pose: the ability to do the basic lion-roaring version of the cat stretch, then moving to the single arm-leg out balancing versions of that before moving into the leg holding variations.
Most important: Balance, balance, balance....
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