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The day after the workshop, and I felt a little crispy this morning at practice. Mostly my shoulders and quads. Which is a-okay. One of the super-bendy backbender gals asked if she was the only one with sore quads. “Do you feel anything at all in your shoulders?” I asked. She looked kind of bewildered and shook her head. Lucky thing.

She knew what I was asking, though. I am loving the new shala because people seem really engaged. We are aware of each others’ challenges even more than in the past. Bendy Gal knows I’m challenged in the shoulders, and I know she is challenged when she tries to come up from laghu vajrasana. Running Girl is new to the group, and she is delightful to watch because she is exactly the kind of practitioner you’d imagine a runner to be: lots of tensile strength, tight hamstrings, great endurance.

I am still feeling madly in love with the backbending, so much so that it is hard to take a day off. But I know I need to. I was reminiscing this morning about the old weightlifting schedule: protocol requires that you take at least 24 hours rest between workout of any given bodypart. Ashtanga is a full body workout. So by the protocol of exercise science, we ought to practice every other day.

In the workshop yesterday, Lisa mentioned that flexible people get stronger and that strong people get more flexible. She mentioned that the strong people also may lose muscle mass. True enough, and largely because of the daily practice, I imagine. I think back to when I was lifting: it would have killed me to give up muscle for a practice. Even when I finally gave up the gym and went All Ashtanga, All The Time, I felt kind of despairing about the loss of muscle mass. Now it’s hard to fathom how I ever could have felt that way.

My boss left a sticky note on my desk the other day. It had little squiggles on it. Under the squiggles she wrote:

Sanskrit for –> Good Job On That Project!

I saved the note. I think it’s hilarious.