First of all, summer has FINALLY, just now, hit my town. And I totally forgot how much I love practicing Bikram during the hot weather. You're nice and pre-heated! It takes 0.2 seconds to warm up! You can break a sweat before you even get into the room! My body is loving this.
Also, I did a bunch of warm-up backbends before class, working mainly on my middle and upper back.
Also, it's almost the full moon?!?
Whatever the reason, I got 10 minutes into class tonight and realized that I had superpowers. No lie. That is the word that came into my head. This occurred to me when I was at the depth of the half moon backbend, second set. I actually felt this very distinct curve in the upper half of my spine as my upper body curved closer to my leg. I knew for a long time that this was theoretically supposed to happen, but I'd never felt it like that. And then, when I rolled my eyes up a little bit, I suddenly had a very clear view of back of my calf muscle. Not even the ankle - the bottom of the freaking calf muscle. (Usually on a good day I can see my heels, just out of the corner of my eye.) I literally froze (as my brain shouted "does not compute!!"), mouthed "WHOA" to myself, and then came out.
After that, class was totally awesome, because not only was my spine doing great, but my confidence was fantastic. I went through the next 15 minutes still in "holy crap" mode. But then in the balancing series, as soon as I started to feel a little wobble or tremble, my brain told me, "You can't fall today! You have superpowers!!" And then, because I knew that I couldn't fall, I didn't fall. Now that was a pretty cool trick, and I recommend it to everyone! The hard part, I guess, is convincing yourself that for one reason or another, you do have superpowers. But once you've got that idea in your head, you are SET...
I told my teacher about my superpowers after class, and she said that she was feeling some crazy superpowers too, while she was teaching, so maybe we were in a freaking force field or something.
Of course tomorrow, my class will probably suck!!!! Because that's how it goes. Day by day. :)
4 comments:
Yeah! Sound like the switch in focus has made you back happy! What exactly have you been focusing on?
Hey B! What's up! Thanks for swinging by! I was totally going to write to you and tell you what I've been up to, cause a bunch of the stuff you made me work on last weekend has been super helpful. First of all, I am thinking a lot about using the deep abdominal muscles, like I did when you put your hand on my lower back. I didn't totally understand what you meant by that at the time, but I've kept playing with it and now it makes a lot of sense and I can feel how it protects my spine. I also remembered to reach OUT more in backbends, like in those slooooooow salutes to the gods + goddesses that we did on Sunday, which is helping me open up my WHOLE spine instead of just lumbar. I've spent the last months seriously re-thinking my backbends, and all the pieces having finally started coming together. Yesterday in class I felt like I had good form AND depth, for once. I didn't feel crunched in my lower back at all, AND I went the farthest that I've ever gone. YIPPEE. Thanks for the help...
Well, it is a FULL moon! :)
NICE!
Congrats J!!! It seems like you opened up your back in that class when you thought you pulled it. Great progress and I love that you made the commitment to stay balanced. Sometimes, that's all we need to stick our poses. Affirmation and commitment.
As for tomorrow, who knows? It's a journey, right? No attachments to today and no anticipation for tomorrow.
Go you with the superpowers!
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