Day Two
Already my hamstrings are more open than yesterday. I stayed with the breath until the janu sirsasanas, when I dove into a pretty negative head space. This often happens somewhere in forward bends. I worry about something, and I can feel the worry make me weak. (You know how that happens in movies — fight scene, clutch moment, the antagonist identifies the central weakness in the protagonist, the protagonist has a moment of self-doubt, weakens, and loses the fight). So, I try to observe it as a bodily experience rather than fight it or identify with it and breathe on. Today that worked pretty well. And the desperation had mostly passed by the end of the marichyasanas. I was also starting to get tired by the end of forward bends — it will take me a couple weeks for my endurance to return — and I had to be more conscious about bhandas for jump backs and jump throughs. When I get tired, I take all the hits in my upper body, which isn’t good for the touchy shoulders.
At kurmasana, CL told me to wait for the adjustment for supta kurmasana. The waiting was good. I noticed how tense and shaky my legs were and relaxed (as I typed that, I noticed how tense my shoulder were and relaxed them, too). They would tense up again, and I would relax them again. I tried to keep that in mind for the next few poses and get to that easy place before the end of my five breaths. Geez, just like everything else in life. Expansion/contraction.
Thoughts of adventure. I read a friend’s blog tonight — I haven’t seen him in years (they moved east, I moved west), but he’s a favorite person. And I thought how nice it would be to see him and his wife. Then remembered that I will be going to a conference in Knoxville at the end of next month. And they aren’t that far away… and it’s near the Blue Ridge Mountains… and H just got me a folding bike frame to travel with… and…and now I’m trying to convince H to meet me in Tennessee and ride to see our friends in Blacksburg. I think it sounds fabulous, but H might take some convincing. I’m gonna go.