Letting Go
Hello friends, I have so many things to share, I don't know where to start!
I had my last day of anatomy class today, unfortunately. I wish I could go every day! It's so nice to have all this yoga knowledge around me that I can soak up.
Yesterday we talked about arms and shoulders. There's very little holding your shoulder into place. The shoulder was not designed as a weight-bearing device the way the hip joint was. So, in Ashtanga we have to rely on musculature to keep everything in place, not on the nature of the joint. We practiced engaging muscles in the hand and felt the muscle chain react all the way up the arm. In down dog, etc we want our weight to be in the inside of our hands (ie the thumb and pointer) because that's the side of the arm with the most weight-bearing capacity. I've had a really hard time with this in my practice. We were told to practice clawing the ground whenever we're in a posture where our palms are flat. This engages muscles and tendons and stuff in the hand that set off the chain of muscle engagement through the arms.
I tried it this morning and it changed so much stuff! I was able to shift my weight much more easily to the inside of my hand and I felt like I had to use a lot less muscle in my shoulders to keep myself in the position.
I had a really good, focused practice this morning (maybe because we were practicing together??). I felt really aware of a lot of things in my body. I got home and crashed for an hour and a half! I haven't been sleeping after practice, but this morning I couldn't stay awake.
Today at anatomy we talked about core muscles and engaging mula bandha and uddiyana bandha. It was really informative, but a lot of the information was sensory, so I don't know if I can communicate it.
Anyhoo, we practiced feeling the difference between the core muscles engaging and the sleeve muscles engaging.
Also, apparently most of the nerves associated with the sympathetic nervous system are in the lower back. Could my low back pain and anxiety be directly related to and feeding one another?? I think so.
Something that kept coming up in class was how our habituated movement patterns manifest themselves in the body and how we have to un-habituate ourselves to make the body healthier (sound similar to te process of dealing with anxiety?). The yoga helps do that, but the teacher suggested giving up other sports for a year or two to get those movements out of the body. It made me think about some of the things I've given up and how going through yoga and reexperiencing old injuries and working through muscle tension that originated in activities I used to do requires a lot of letting go. A lot more than just physically letting go. We hold so many emotions in our body along with physical tension. I'm not sure what else to say about that, other than the yoga helps move through and past the things that have happened to us, which is directly related to how we hold and how we've used our bodies. Yoga practice can't progress till you're ready to let some of those familiar patterns go.
In other news, I went to the chirporactor for an initial consultation on Tuesday. She had me go get an x-ray of my lower back at the local hospital. It was included in the consultation fee, but if it hadn't been it would've cost me $6. But I digress. The long and the short of it is I have some narrowing of my discs between my L4 and L5, and L5 and S1 vertebrae. These are the vertebrae all the way at the base of the spine. Surprise, this is where my back hurts. There's also some calcification on those vertebrae. The chiropractor gave me an exercise to put movement into that part of the spine. She said that will increase fluid in the discs and help them heal. My shoulders are tight and hunched a little forward and my neck goes forward too. She worked on bringing my shoulders back and gave me some exercises to stretch out the front of my chest. Today, she's giving a posture class, so I can learn to sit up straight, which she thinks is what I need more than anything else.
I must admit, I freaked out a little bit when I saw the narrowing of the discs. I feel like I'm too young to have this. The chiropractor told me it's not that bad, and that it's actually fairly normal in someone who's done the kind of physical activity I've done.
Now that anatomy class is done, I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with all my free time.
I'll figure out something. Although, exercises and meditation and playing around with sensations, etc can take up quite a lot of someone's day. It's nice to be here and have the time to focus on it. It's harder to spend a half hour a day stretching out your shoulders at home.
We have a led class again tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how different it feels after 4 days of self-led practice.
Hugs,
Lauren
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