Day 35

I went to morning class today! I'm an afternoon/evening type of yogini most of the time, but I have to do an AM class on Thursdays or I don't get to go to class at all. One of those nagging small goals on my back burner is to make morning practice a more frequent thing for me. Once a week is a start, isn't it?

This morning I got yelled at for backward bending during pranayama...just a bit of laziness, or lack of awareness on my part...still sleepy, maybe. I was not as flexy in the opening postures--not unusual for a morning class.

But I surprised myself with Eagle! It's a posture that I haven't had too hard a time with, and I rarely give it much thought. I've been trying to work a bit on getting my upper body back though. I am shocked at how much lower I can bring my hips if I am not leaning or hunching forward. I've had a pretty good wrap for a long time, but today I touched my right big toe to the top of my left (standing) foot for the very first time! I just busted out in a great big smile and felt goofy and happy about it. I got so caught up in my happy goofy feeling, in fact, that I fell out of the posture a couple of times during the second set.

I enjoyed most of the rest of class, but I found myself tiring out near the end. I did my best ever standing head to knee today too (not that my head is on my knee yet, but I'm kicking out with more and more ease and more strength). And I had a moment of...I don't know, insight, maybe, or emotional something or other during bow pose.

Bow pose has often hurt my left knee, a lot. I try to be as careful as possible to keep the knee alignment during the pose, and this lessens the chance of pain, but sometimes it just looks like 'all systems, go' and I lift up and...ow, it hurts. So I am really scared of it sometimes.

My dog broke his front leg a few days ago, and he's been limping around with a splint. He wants so badly to play fetch, to chase a tennis ball or a squirrel in the yard, but if he gets too much weight on his hurt leg, he winces and pulls it up again.

One of the relationship issues I've been having is sort of like that too. I have isolated, gotten quite depressed, and put a lot of my life on hold during T's illness, and he is sometimes angry and annoyed about that. I'm an introvert anyway, and T is an extrovert, so we approach some things very differently. We were quarreling about it yesterday, him urging me to get out in the world more, to socialize and be positive. I told him, "I'm trying, and I'm working on it, but I am going slow. I can't be changed overnight. I'm like Buddy; I'm not ready to put all of my weight on my paw yet."

That conversation flashed through my mind during bow pose today. I guess it is a little bit similar--going slow, being kind of careful, testing things out and being easy on myself where there is pain involved. We can't let old injuries keep us from trying, but sometimes we need to do some healing before we push too hard.

I feel pretty sure that Buddy and me are both gonna heal up just fine.