donutszenmom.com

Someone asked for more info about the Freeman workshop, so here goes:

Shoulders: We spent a lot of time on alignment of the shoulders. In particular, during up dog. The tips: pull your upper body through between your arms, use your feet to drag and provide resistance, and make sure to keep some bend in your elbows. The pull of the feet will create a traction effect in the lumbar region, and as we all know, that means the coccyx will then attract the pubic bone, instead of repelling it. Okay, I’m saying that kind of snidely, because when RF says it, it sounds poetic and sensible, and when I paraphrase it, I sound like a nut.

Wings of the kidneys: Yes, he said it. Many times. This is just the sort of thing that makes The Cop howl with derision, but hey, it’s kind of a snazzy catchphrase, isn’t it? The “wings” are related to the T12 “floating ribs.” Actually, maybe they even just are the floating ribs. No matter. We were encouraged not to pinch the wings closed, ever. Well, I’m kind of assuming the “ever” part. Definitely no wing-pinching during up or down dog, or during the arm raising portions of the suryas. The more I think about it, the more I’m pretty sure you just don’t ever do it.

Silly as I’m being, it really is nice to keep that area of the back nice and open. Pretty much impossible to pinch your shoulders shut, too, when you’re stretching through the T12 area. This is quite helpful in downward dog.

Your mouth: Relax it. Bring awareness to the upper palate in relation to your breath, and to the relationship they have with the energy that moves up the spine and through the crown.

Note to self: It would be very useful if I could hire someone to say “your mouth” about every 30 seconds throughout my entire practice.

Cave of the sacrum: Great metaphor. I heard him say it a good while ago and totally loved it from the very first. It makes a perfect kinesthetic sense to me. It was mentioned more over the weekend, though in rather abstract terms. The dealio: be aware of the cave of the sacrum. I have no idea how to explain the physical ramifications of this concept, because every time I hear “cave of the sacrum,” my pose adjusts itself and I have no clear idea about how it really happens.

I believe at some point there was talk of a golden fish in the cave of the sacrum, and then things got all tantric. It’s funny how you get high from these sorts of events. I grabbed a ride back to Scottsdale from Volleyball Guy and Sanskrit Scholar. We stopped for something to drink and Sanskrit Scholar and I stumbled about through a highway mini-mart.

“Are you kind of spacey?” she asked me.
“I feel like we spent the day at the beach,” I said.
And it really was just like that.