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I think I may have solved the mystery of the pain in my lower back, which arose in practice this morning. As we do our Surya As and Bs, we usually stop once for the folks on one side of the room to go across to the folks across from them and give them a down dog adjustment. Then we stop once for the folks in the row that was adjusted to go over and return the favor.

I’ve never met the gal who gave me an adjustment today, but she sure dealt out a weird one. Where you usually put your hands on the down-dogger’s lower back and then press up and back, perhaps pressing your body evenly up their spine, my adjustor put her hand square on my upper back and pressed straight down. As if she was adjusting me into a face plant. Then she went around behind me, grabbed my lower shins and pulled toward herself, hard. Kinda like pulling my legs out from under me.

I was surprised and also perplexed, wondering if perhaps this was some new-fangled adjustment I’d not seen before, or maybe the way another school of yoga adjusts or something.

It occured to me as I woke from my nap (I figure lots of stuff out in the hypnogogic state) that the strange adjustment may have set the back pain off. I asked The Cop to help me verify–I got into down dog and he pressed straight down on my upper back. Yup, it makes the spasmy place in my back go crazy. So this begs the question: How do I make sure it never happens again? Do I scream if someone I don’t know ever tries to adjust me? LOL! That would be kind of funny, but probably disruptive. I’m going to ask Volleyball Guy on Monday. Not like I’m not already paranoid about getting adjustments from people I don’t trust. Which I am. But I try to be a good sport. Apparently there is a middle ground here that I need to define more clearly.

Volleyball Guy said an interesting thing in led primary this morning. We were doing hanumanasana–which is either a non-traditional addition to the series that John Scott apparently also does, or else it is something that used to be in the series but was then taken out; I’m not sure which–and he said “The hamstrings never really release. There is no point you can get to where they just release. It’s always a slow work-in-progress.” Sigh. Gosh, I hate hanumanasana.

So there I am, watching the sweat drip off my nose onto my rug, being informed that the day will never come when I slide into hanumanasana effortlessly, with no resistance from my hamstrings. It seemed quite tragic. Sure, I bucked up and thought, “Would I even want to practice, if there weren’t all these resistances?” But I knew I was secretly thinking, “Oh God, really? It’s always going to hurt? Why am I doing this?!?”

I try not to harbor those thoughts for very long. What good do they do? But it was a hard practice today, with a mysterious pain in my right lower back. The scary kind that seems to presage a spasm-type injury. I tried to explain quickly when Volleyball Guy came over to adjust me in Janu B. He asked me where it hurt and then just kind of massaged my back while I struggled into the pose. The Dancer, who only comes to practice on Saturdays, and who was next to me, asked “Are you okay?” as I came out of the pose. She is just the sweetest person. Kindness in the shala has a very intense resonance. It always reminds me that that is really what we are there for.

And it wasn’t all bad news: bhujapidasana is coming along pretty nicely. And jumpbacks.

Ultimately, I guess the resistance is not in my hamstrings. Or in my back. Or rather, it is in those places, but that’s not the heart of the resistance. The real resistance is in my mind. I have no idea why I am fighting myself so hard in practice, why I am not just relaxing into it. But tomorrow is my day off, so I will rest. And then on Monday, I’ll practice.