Cold, Heat, Stretch, Eating palm fronds
Posted in ashtanga yoga, dog! on 11/03/2009 01:13 pm by karenA little under the weather today. Kinda tired and headachey. Maybe a cold coming on? I was all pathetic at practice (internally, kinda whiny — externally, probably couldn’t tell anything was going on). But I pretty much had to fight off the impulse to just curl up on my mat and go to sleep.
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“Why does baddha konasana hurt so much?” That’s a keyword phrase that brought someone to the site recently. If you’re still around and reading: take heart! It stops hurting. Eventually. It was a good couple of years (with 6 months off when my piriformis totally rebelled), but now baddha k is my FAVORITE pose. Largely because it was so hard won.
I think back though, and wonder: Why did I persist?
Is it some leftover tapas from a past life? That’s all I can figure.
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Seems like psoas stretching is a big fad among Ashtangis these days. I’m in. I’ve been doing lunges twice a day for the past few days now. And there’s hanumansana after the prasaritas every day. Still, my shoulders and hip flexors are super-recalcitrant in backbends. Oh, I guess I’m responsible for that, eh? All of those squats and shoulder presses and my abiding love for climbing overhangs. Ah well.
We have to do what we love. Like eating palm fronds.
11/03/2009 at 6:40 pm
wow, that’s some muzzle! I like the squinched up nose, he’s really digging in on that frond!
Psoas, man, it’s the key to the poses that I can do but can’t feel any love for yet (mainly Kapo). I should do lunges, but for me it would be more for a butt lift than a psoas stretch! Hey, I can work on two things at once!
you better blog about London!!! WITH PHOTOS. I’m very demanding.
11/03/2009 at 6:48 pm
Oh yeah, I’ll be blogging. Need to figure out how to bring the iPhone but avoid the thousand-dollar international charges…
11/03/2009 at 9:24 pm
Karen, my Blackberry has a “no data services while roaming” option that allows me to make calls when I’m abroad but avoids the insane roaming charges for things like push email. Maybe you can set your iPhone to do something like that, and check if the hotel has a computer to use (many do). Or if you are close to a library (for example, I used to go to one off Fleet Street before I had the BB to check my gmail).