Just Yoga

Sweaty palms.

2007-08-05T13:08:00.001-07:00

My hands seem to be the first parts of my body to get sweaty. And since I really like the fast-paced, sweat inducing vinyasa yoga, this makes movement a tad difficult. This is something I struggled with for the past couple of years since, not only am I a sweater, I'm also lanky and hence not as strong as stockier yogis.

The solutions, as I identified them, were:

1. Practice on a towel, or buy a yoga towel.
Unfortunately, this increases schlepping to and from yoga class. Plus I'd have to
do more laundry. No thanks.
2. Wear gloves.
I just can't bring myself to wear gloves (or even one glove, a la Michael
Jackson). I'm a minimalist, and like to only have my mat and some relaxed
clothing. This doesn't include gloves. Plus, it looks dumb.
3. Getting a better mat.
This is
the solution I pursued. First, I thought this woven cotton mat would
solve all of my problems. It didn't. The cotton is stretchy, which makes any pose
using two opposing anchor points a problem. (Like any warrior. My hands stuck to
the mat, but in this case, the mat moved.)

Here's the best mat I found. It's made of renewable rubber, comes in different thicknesses and colors, and is really sticky. Well worth the higher than the average mat's sticker price.

Ouch, my back.

2007-07-29T15:34:00.001-07:00

I hurt my back from sleeping on a sofabed (oy gevalt!) and was hobbling/waddling around all day yesterday. I definitely saw the appeal of a walker.

This one looks like the deluxe walker, and is complete with a seat. It's also Australian.

Instead of compensating by clenching my stomach muscles and pointing my tail to the floor, legs askance like someone who just got off horse, or sitting with my lower back curved, I decided to do something about it.

Time for yoga.
Ah yoga, how I love thee. Seriously, I believe it can fix almost any physical ailment (maybe not viruses, infections, tumors, or gangrene...) It gives you good posture, exercises your lungs, brain, concentration, muscle awareness and control, you can give yourself great massages: balance on your ass and roll around on it, it's kind of fun).

It totally worked. I feel about a million times better than I did yesterday. No excruciating spasms, only awkward tenderness (not like in high school, I mean in my back and the way I have to walk to compensate for it).

I did a sequence that basically massaged my back and helped me ease into moving it, although I could only bend it one way, spine curving under.

Here's a description of the sequence I did:
I did corpse pose, legs bent, with knees touching. Then I rolled up, head and shoulders first, which stretched out my spine and massaged the muscles next to it. After doing this for a few breaths, I lay my back flat, tucked my chin, and held my knees, pulling them closer to my chest with every exhale, while keeping my tail pointed down (ah, to have a REAL tail...) I gingerly let my knees fall to one side, followed by my upper body, fetused for a moment, then rolled my shoulders onto the floor, so that my hand and head were opposite my knees. A nice relaxed, spine-stretching twist. Then I decided to try bending my spine *gulp* the other way. The way that comes with a spasm. Cow and cat.

Then I rocked child's pose (I had forgotten about the benefits of these relaxed postures, duh!) rabbit (looks like child above, but with head to the knee, and concavest spine possible. Finished it off with some more knees to the chest, rolling around to massage the lower back.

And you know what? I feel surprisingly nimble. I wonder when I'll be able to do some spinal bends going the other way. I'll keep you posted, as I know you're waiting with bated breath.

On the Road. The road to inversions, that is.

2007-07-11T09:36:00.000-07:00

The first time I did a handstand, with the help of the yoga teacher, of course, I looked around the room at everyone in my class who had lined themselves up along the wall, kicking their feet into the air, and bent into downward dog to join them. The feeling I had, that of naked fear, was unexpected. What was so scary about doing a handstand? The wall is fixed, stable, unmoving. Everyone else did it without harming themselves. So what was it, then?

Most articles I've read online claim that it's fear of hurting the neck. Maybe some people worry about that, but it isn't an overt concern of mine. I'm afraid that I don't have the strength to support myself in hand or headstand, that I'll injure myself (neck included), and -- this is the main one -- inversions are so different from any experiences we have in our lives, they are bound to challenge ourselves, physically at the very least.

So I'm going to build up my strength with other poses, and work on other inversions to start.

*They can't crush the idealist in me!