Yoga It Out
I have been doing a lot of reading and sitting at tables and desks doing school-work, listening to lectures, stressing, and smoking cigarettes these last couple of months. Coupled with less yoga, my body went into shock. I got a crick in the neck last week, my weird shoulder got all shaky, and the torsion in my pelvis (a common misalignment) was much worse. That’s from crossing my legs in the Western way at the ole desk. I regressed into pretty bad shape pretty fast.
So Friday I re-quit smoking. I took a new pack to the full moon bonfire, and smoked the heck out of ‘em. More often than I’d put one between my lips, I’d toss a few into the fire. By the time I put the last glowing embers out with the hose, I was spent, and the cigarettes were gone. Not to want any more ever again.
Sunday I managed to sit through trying to read a scholarly article without escaping to tobacco. I sat until I couldn’t sit any more, and then I couldn’t not do some yoga.
My right side taught my left side so much. I ironed out so many differences from side to side. I really got to know what was going on with my left hip, and noticed how much more I had to work my left abductor, which kind of forgets to do anything. My pelvis laboriously rotated to alignment in the poses.
I worked it. In all different kinds of poses. My left shoulder is a whole other story. But I talked to it too, coaxed it to more normalcy, and meanwhile adjusted vertebrae in my upper back. Funny how it’s all one thing. I found new space in restorational inversions and backbends, I put all the information my mentor gave me in the tiny class of two I was in on Friday to poignant use.
Three hours later, I was in heaven. I went straight to bed, my lower back glowing with a radiating warmth. Thank god for yoga, counterforce to sad, painful slumping. Unfortunately I have to go hit the books now, and my sacroiliac is complaining already, struggling to hold on to it’s adjustment from last night. The body wants it, it yearns for healing.
N. Lois Turtledove is a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Denver obtaining a Master's Degree in Humanities. She teaches yoga inside and outside the home, and is an apprentice in the ancient therapeutic art of shamanic practice. She understands that the only real enemy is the self, and the Self is the deepest source of nurture. She wishes freedom from suffering for herself and for all sentient beings.