Downward Facing Depressed.

When I first started doing yoga, the poses were difficult, but I soon felt that I had reached a point when I could do at least a few poses fairly well. I was wrong. Yoga is much harder, and takes MUCH more practice than I had previously thought and this realization brought with it a flood of negative gunas. 

From about week 3 to week 6, I had started seeing real improvement in my practice. I could finally get my heels down in Downward facing Dog, my Tree Pose was more steady, and I even felt more calm in Shivasana. This illusion of my apparent ability to perform poses I had just began to practice was ridiculous looking back, and I feel stupid for taking pride in my poses that were so close from perfect. looking at Iyengar's pictures and then analyzing my own posture, along with more closely watching my teacher in class, and YouTube yoga instructors, showed me that I still have a ton of work to do. 

At first, I was a bit upset. The progress I had seen was false and I became dejected and unmotivated to practice.  I think that leading discussion on Thursday, and having to engross myself in Patanjali in preparation for our discussion, helped to remind me what really matters, And it isn't prideful feelings about poses.