Wandering Mind

is a ball-and-socket joint formed by the head of the femur and the acetabulum of the hip bone"
or
The hip joint: where the femur attaches to the pelvis, specifically the illium, the ischium and the pubis. The iliofemoral ligament, the ischiofemoral ligament and the pubofemoral ligaments reinforce this joint and in process limit the motion in our hip some (meaning me) much more than others. Also, being male, my sub-pubic angle is much tighter than that of a female which explains why my hips seem to open up so damn slowly, and from what I understand, as a pregnant woman progresses through pregnancy her hips open even more. With the intention to allow for the birth but I hear it has some benefits in certain poses as well and obviously I will never have that experience… If that didn’t make sense to you that’s ok, it didn’t to me either until I was looking at pictures in my books.

So if you hadn’t guessed, we did hip opening in Michael’s alignment class tonight. It was extremely enlightening as Michael didn’t hold back on the anatomy and talked through it slowly enough that it made sense. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been trying to work my way through the anatomy books, myself. So as soon as I got home I double checked the books to try to remember what he said and apply it to what I felt both statically and dynamically in the class. It was really pretty cool.

From the waist down I feel very loose and open and I can just feel the blood flowing and the openness of my hips. However we did very little twisting and shoulder work and no inversions so my upper body is still raring to go. After savasana I went to the back of the room and did handstand to help release the shoulders and give myself a little bit of an inversion. I actually held it for 10 breaths, which is the longest I’ve ever balanced in that pose.

The room was relatively full tonight, too, which hampered my vinyasas as I need about one and a third mat lengths to really be able to float through them. During one of them some poor woman hit her head on my foot (No, I did not kick her, my foot was stationary on the floor when she knocked her head into it) I still said sorry right away and felt horrible for the rest of the class…

It was a nice change of pace in the class. Even the vinyasa classes here are very ashtangic as we always do the Suryas then the standing and finish with the finishing and the variations usually happen when one would normally be doing primary or second series. Granted there is a little license used in parts of the standing series but it’s essentially the standard Ashtanga standing. (Standard standing…that’s kinda funny). But anyway, my point was that tonight was a real change of pace because we weren’t really following Ashtanga sequence and usually my shoulders are exhausted by the end of the class and this may be just the rest they needed…

So now to grab some dinner and off to bed as I will be back in the studio at 6:30 tomorrow morning.

By the way, have I mentioned how beautiful it is here? There’s this gorgeous ridge that I get to look at whenever I drive towards home. I drive through orchards, wetlands, fields and forests in the 4 miles to my house. I see deer daily and regularly see hawks, eagles, wild turkey, finches, woodpeckers, red-wing black birds… I’ve seen herons, a fox, maybe a coyote, and all kinds of other really cool things. I’m really looking forward to taking the motorcycle out on these roads in the fall…
Anyway, I’m off.