Saturday, December 4, 2010

A Little Yoga Never Hurt

Funny I make that the title of this blog, because that's exactly how I hurt myself in the first place. Doing yoga in my living room I pulled my back and for the last four years on and off I've been dealing with some variation and intensity of it's occurrance.

In the beginning it hurt like hell, riding in cars was unbearable. In fact, the only thing that seemed to dull the pain, was ironicallly yoga or bouts of dancing and some beers. At some point the pain just became a part of daily life. In Australia, I hardly noticed it, whether or not that's because it was or was not there I'm not entirely sure. When I started doing courses with Peak Potentials, there was a good 7 months where it was almost entirely gone (haha, a time when I was doing yoga often), it was as if I was 10 again, climbing trees, jumping around and doing crazy stuff and then it came back like a tonne of bricks when I started working at the Chiropractic clinic. Same time I also did Enlightened Warrior and Ultimate Leadership. I can sit here and try and tie them all together and figure out exactly what I was feeling, or being 'out of alignment' with, but the 'bottom line' was that there was something going on I wasn't dealing with. Or at least that's what I decided to believe. That was the last time I did yoga...fall 2008.

Making that decision to start listening to my body signals began a serious period of introspection and lots and lots of processing, clearing and intending, not to mention healing. But when I decided to come out to Vancouver in February my intention was to heal, write and get re-focused. What I thought healing was and what I actually got were two entirely different things! I envisioned myself going to Bikram's Yoga for an entire month and devoting my time to reuniting with my body. Ya, that was the last thing I did over this last year....until now.

Yesterday I did it. I bought a one month pass to a hot yoga studio with the intention of using this month of December to do that healing I had evisioned at the start of the year. As I laid on the mat before the session started, feeling the heat in more than the physical sense, I heard that voice, "Are you sure?" I started the session and about 4 poses in when my thighs were burning and shaking and we had to squat down for another pose, "What did you get yourself into...and PS. YOU ARE OUT OF SHAPE MISSY!"

Then of course I'm irritated because my towel is just a tad too long for my stance so I've got to adjust it everytime we switch poses cuz I'm sliding everywhere. And then the serious sweat comes on. Thankfully I wasn't as sweaty as the man infront of me, who had a puddle surrounding his entire mat. And as much as I enjoy looking at the masculine physique (and I do enjoy that and his was nice) he was wearing his underwear, briefs no less, and he was dripping from EVERY possible part of his body! {Learn to love everyone and everything Kelly...even briefs...let it go...:) }

Finally we get to the sitting poses where a) I don't have to look at dripping man anymore, b) I get to SIT! c) I get to stretch, which was what I was craving, and I think my body too...

Of course I felt amazing afterwards...how can't you when you end in savasana and just lay there, eyes closed and feeling the world around you instead of the chaos in my mind.

When I woke up this morning all I could feel was my butt muscles moaning in stiffness and that voice, "You sure you wanna do this again today? That's just punishment." And perhaps it is, but based on all the stuff that keeps coming up for me today as a result, I'm obviously clearing and sweating out something more than my weight in water.

Looking forward to this journey...and all it reveals and how damn good I'm gonna feel. YUM!

No comments: