Life is not fair

My friend, who is getting a divorce, has been diagnosed with breast cancer. It is ER+, which is a relatively good news. It is not known if there was a lymph node involvement. She is holding up amazingly well. But it is a very sad atmosphere now in the lab. We just feel helpless somehow. :(

Brand new week

The Internet access in my house was intermittent at best this weekend, so I gave up on it completely. As a result, I was incredibly productive and accomplished a lot, which made me feel really good. Is it possible that the Internet is the source of all evil after all?

On Saturday, I went to see an acupuncturist. She was a very pleasant woman, young looking, with some yoga experience in the past. She was taking my pulse a lot, and inserted two kinds of needles into my back - the regular ones and the "cones", which she heated up with an open fire. I have not realised how very hot these needles were until she first cooled down one of them by putting it in water ( the hissing sound clued me in) and then dropping one of them on my back (the hissing sound was coming from me this time). Here is a picture. My back is not normally this spotty; she marked it with a marker and the red spots are where the hot needles previously were:

I practiced on Sunday and my shoulder blade was hurting really bad afterwards. But I was glad that I went anyway, because I ascertained that I can lift up from UD, not only after a dropback, but from a static pose as well. Yay! Second, I attended the Q and R session with David, where he talked about breath and bandhas, which was interesting and useful. Third, I found out that one of our Ashtangis professionally practices acupuncture and his office is two blocks away from my house. I wish I knew this earlier! Now I have to let go of the pleasant lady in favor of my fellow ashtangi. I hate doing that!

So my shoulder needs healing. No practice for this week. Luckily, there will be no teaching as well until next Sunday, so I can heal without interruptions. This sucks, of course, but I learned the hard way that my impatience hurts me every time.

This going to be a short and sweet week. Happy Monday!

The week is over! Well, nearly...

Skipped shala again, had a slow and gentle practice at home. Avoided everything that irritated my shoulder blade, which this time also included jumping back, forward and through, and all twists. Sleep was better today, but to compensate for that I had a really bad dream. In this dream, my husband confessed he was in love with another woman and leaving immediately. I woke up sobbing, and realised that I just projected my friend's situation onto myself. Good thing in this nightmare I did not have to deal with a breast cancer scare (which is still not resolved), otherwise I might have not woken up at all.

Yoga nidra progress - I rotated all the way through the right leg! With this speed I will be able to finish the whole practice in a couple of years! :)

Happy Friday!

Practicing patience and yoga nidra

My shoulder blade was very unhappy all day long yesterday and at night too, so I decided to baby it a little and skip the practice today. Though the suspense is killing me! Can I lift up again or not? Can I do it from a static UD? But the quality of my sleep was so poor because of the stabbing pain every turn would bring that I think it was prudent for me to wait a little.

Speaking of sleep. I have a 45 minute Yoga Nidra program on my Ipod that sounds very interesting. From the bits and pieces I caught, they go into deep relaxation and then do weird things, like induce a feeling of cold in the left foot or some such. I am very curious. I tried it five times already and I fall promptly to sleep at the point when the rotation of the consciousness reaches the right elbow. I have a supreme awareness now of all the fingers of my right hand, palm, wrist and the elbow. The rest of the body - not so much. I tried it mostly before bed because it is the only time I have, but obviously it does not work for me. Hopefully, on the weekend I can find time when I am not sleepy and finish the rest of 43 minutes of it.

Peace and happiness!

Allégresse

Turns out it is helpful once in a while to plunge into the depth of despair. It makes the next day all the more better. I woke up today with a stiff neck (slept poorly because of the shoulder blade pain), came to practice without any high expectations. The first several up dogs were excruciatingly painful in my upper back, but I persisted because I am familiar with this pain and know that movement helps. We had a girl from shala subbing for David today (who had a knee surgery on Monday). I was kind of glad I did not have to explain why I am skipping kurmasana and supta kurmasana, because she was a little overwhelmed with the full class and did not keep track of the poses. When I reached setu bandhasana, I hesitated for a moment, and did it anyway. It was not too bad, except for the very last moment of rolling out of the pose, when I had to press into the back on my head. I sat for a moment and almost cried because of the misery of this morning's practice. Did three UD, they actually felt good. Then got up and prepared for the dropbacks. Looked around - the girl was talking to David, who came to observe. So I dropped back on my own, tried to stand up, fell down. OK, I thought, I will try again. I tried and stood up! I did not quite believe what happened, so tried again, and stood up again. Third times - same thing. Yay! Nearly cried again, this time from jubilation. The girl came around and congratulated me on the "graduation from the bench". Lying in savasana, I thought about it and realized that getting up from the dropbacks gives a little additional momentum, which I was missing from the static pose. Which means that I still have to learn how to stand up from UD after 5 breaths, but I think this time it will not take 6 months. I am so excited!

Today is also my son's 21st birthday. My poor baby is all alone in New York, no friends to go to the bar and celebrate the fact that he is legal to drink now (OK, I am not too sorry about that). I still wish he were home so we could celebrate it together.

Have a great day, everybody!

Desolation and despair

I just do not get it. I am flexible. I am relatively strong. I am quite fearless. I am stubborn as a mule. Why can't I get this standing-from-UD thing? Honestly! I do not see anybody around having as much trouble as I am. Keith said today that he actually talked to David about giving me Pasasana, but David said no, mostly in light of my recent injury. He wants me to do the drop-back-stand-up consistently before moving further. I have a sinking feeling that I am stuck here forever. No matter that I can bind in pasasana with the heels down. I am stuck.

Speaking of the injury, my pain in the shoulder blade which I think is the remnant of the rib injury I had recenlty, flared up in the last couple of days, particularly after kurmasana and suptakurmasana. I did not even mention it to Keith, he must be tired of me whining about my pains and aches. I will just slack off these two poses in the coming week and use a muscle rub at night. Oh, and Epsom salt bath. Not to forget Epsom salt bath...

My friend, who is getting a divorce, is having a biopsy of a lump in her breast. I do not even know how she is holding up there. Too much crap clamped together. It gives me a perspective, though. I bet she would trade her troubles for my UD any day! I am done whining about UD from now on. I promise!
:)

The downside of being healthy

Turns out that I am healthy as a horse. At least biochemically speaking. I got back the results of the multiple tests I had done for the baseline before starting CRON. The idea was that I will enjoy the dramatic improvement of multiple indicators of my health by following the calorie reduction. But my results are practically the same as people's who followed CRON for many years. Which is interesting, because one would expect some health hazards associated with having nearly 30% of body fat. What am I to do now? I wonder if changing something in my lifestyle will actually worsen everything, because there is no room for improvement. Darn.

The weekend is over and I did not even notice it. But I did lots of yoga today, so it was not completely wasted.

I hope you guys had a great weekend!

I am baaaack!

I had a deep tissue massage yesterday! My body feels nice, if a little weak. I wish I were rich, so I could have massages weekly. Aah! I shared with Keith my theory about lacking psoas minor and hence the inability to stand up from UD. He laughed and said that the advantage of good education is that we could come up with really good excuses. I guess he did not buy it.

Low energy, but focused practice today. When I reached UD, something interesting happened. Keith was helping me to go down and up, and at one point he said he did not do anything and I stood up on my own. I am not sure whether to believe him; but if it is true, then my problem is not physical, but purely psychological. How to deal with it now? I was visualizing my lifting up like a maniac, it did not help. Maybe I should get an inflatable prop, which would pretend helping me? Hmmm.

Thank you, everyone for your good wishes. I could feel them and they do help a lot.

Happy, happy Friday, everyone!

Delirium

During the last 2 days I think I slept at least 36 hours. Granted, most of them I spent in a theraflu-induced coma, it was very restful nevertheless. I still feel crappy and feverish, but better than yesterday. Tried to do some yoga, but gave up due to shaky knees. Tomorrow would be a better day to re-start my yoga.

But I ordered my Mac! Can't wait for it to arrive. Thank you everyone for contributing your opinions. My husband did not approve very much, claiming that I hammered the last nail into the Vista coffin, but I am OK with it. I need to learn new things, and Mac OS seems like a good one to start. I am also contemplating buying a camcorder, but I will wait until my head and sinuses clear up a little.

Be healthy, everyone. I am off to bed. So what it's only 10 am?

Cold again.

I am sick. I can satisfy snot needs of a small country. Head hurts, throat hurts, too. I woke up feeling like shit and thought "Thank God it's a moon day!" Now, how sick is that?
I had a cold relatively recently. What happened to my defences? I wonder if my strive for anti-inflammatory, omega-3-rich diet affects my ability to fight infections. Who knows? Can't think.

Again, my cold was preceded by two days of crappy practices. This is interesting. Maybe next time I have a rough practice I should take extra vitamin C and oscillo and this will prevent getting sick? Might be worth exploring.
I hope your moon day is better than mine! :)