The progress up to this point (12/12/2012) is “subtle”, and I must confess that I hadn’t worked on this pose much in the past month or so. Instead, I spent most of my stretching time on hip-opening stretches like single and double pigeon poses, and half lotus. Hanuman is a super intense pose for me, and I think I sometimes rather do other stretches because of that. Now that I have said it out, I recognize that it is an excuse. Of course it’s hard! The only way to achieve this goal is to practice it regularly. I am going to do just that! *pump fist*
From the pics above, it looks like I am getting just slightly closer to the floor, especially my back leg. I don’t see a lot of progress on the front leg though. The biggest improvement is I am able to hold my upperbody in a more upright position, which is the correct form of the pose.
This morning (12/14/2012), I worked on only stretches that help doing the splits. After about 30mins of stretching, it’s amazing how much closer I was able to get to the floor. I was a bit disappointed 2 days ago about my progress, and doubted that I would ever be able to do this pose. I feel a lot more encouraged today. It just shows that targeted practice is so important in getting results.
Here is Kino MacGregor showing how to do Hanumanasana properly: