Today after my Ashtanga yoga practice I decided to break out the hand balancing canes that have been sitting in the yoga room untouched for quite some time now. It's one thing to do an arm balance pose or a handstand on the mat, some even find that intimidating, but doing them raised off the floor ups the ante quite a bit in terms of fear factor and potential for injury if you fall off of them wrong. Well today I got back on them because I was feeling playful after I finished my regular practice and I got some good pictures to share. This first one is a pose I've been doing for years now and it's one I can do easily any day any time...but on the canes it's different. This is just a basic arm balance (for me) called crane pose or bakasana in Sanskrit which I've been able to do pretty easily for years and it was my first pose on the canes today. Looks just as good up on those things as it does on the mat but damn it's a little bit intimidating! ![canes crane.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRKinxJaFTiQobeXBcL2Yv8N1Wtr4EJhXwMjoC8Gg5Spp/canes%20crane.JPG) Then I got to thinking, what else could I do that's not a high risk of injury that I'm pretty comfortable doing on the floor. Oh I know, peacock pose! ![canes peacock.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmYj78ydrkmQnZffLepqpUsPFAx1LKiwsp1fNEhfRNVV67/canes%20peacock.JPG) This one felt really good and my balance point was solid as a rock. Doing the more basic poses (basic for me) will eventually build my confidence and I'll be able to do more hardcore stuff on them. I didn't realize how much strength is required to do cool stuff on these like I'd imagined I'd be able to do when I first got them. I need to start lifting weights again honestly because I feel I've lost a little bit of strength lately (seriously, it may be hard to believe but I'm my own worst critic sometimes). So next I decided to throw in a little variation, up the difficulty level and cross my legs in lotus pose while doing peacock on these here canes that my wife got me for Christmas but I haven't used very often. Nailed it! ![canes lotus peacock.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSxMZjrE9mdxD6L4SKxPSM5afb3stfK9w6foCRXR4UK7e/canes%20lotus%20peacock.JPG) Then I got to thinking...what if I could do this on just one hand? I've done it on the canes without my legs crossed before (I posted this about six months ago) on one hand, maybe I could do a variation of this in lotus on one hand. This is the version of it with my legs straight. I can still do this one... ![one arm.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQsA3x8Vse35mZz1fbNkbYJSGGyb7rEWqegJyAU5ihw43/one%20arm.JPG) Yeah that was my new pose about six months ago. I was so proud of it. But lately I've been lax in my practice and am trying to rebuild the most awesome parts of my practice. So onward to the version in lotus on only one hand! Well that was a bit much and I kinda dropped out of it so I wouldn't get hurt. Here's me doing it on the floor on the safety of my mat. I only held it for about half a second and this pic was cropped out of a video. I'm gonna work on this one now so I can hold it for a few breaths and maybe in a month or so you'll see me flying high on those canes in this crazy pose. ![floor 1.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmS6jsfEXv2ZTgo6grwuWsKw5yMS8cBsMTfbvXSyPX3gA3/floor%201.JPG) It's been a long time since I posted any yoga pictures and I'm glad I decided to play around after my rigid Ashtanga practice today. That style of yoga is great and well-rounded in terms of gaining strength and flexibility, but it's fun to deviate and do my own thing sometimes. It was also really nice to have some fun on a weekday practicing with my wife after work. The work weeks have been hard on me lately and today was actually a pretty good day and this was one of the highlights of it. I'm glad I could share it with you all and I hope you are inspired by this to go out and pursue whatever it is that you're working towards and improve in whatever you're passionate about! That's a big part of what makes life fun for me--the challenge of things and achieving awesomeness.