Wandering Mind

Motivated, Not, Motivated, Not, Motivated, Not…This has been my morning. I woke up ready to practice, armed with knowledge. (Skip to the next paragraph if you don't want your A&P lesson of the day...) I found some information about the hamstring and how it’s part of the superficial back line of myofascial trains. Essentially, this line of connected myofascia starts at the balls of the feet, goes over the heel, up the achilles tendon, the calf, the hamstrings, then the hamstrings are “connected” to the sacrum through the sacrotuberous ligament, from the sacrum we get into the muscles of the back, then the neck and wraps up the back of the head all the way to the forehead. So by manipulating one area of this line you can, in fact, affect the entire line. If you roll a ball under your foot pressing as hard as you can finding the fine line between pleasure and pain, you start to relax and release this whole line. Try it. Take uttanasana (make sure your legs are straight) and just feel how far you can comfortably fold forward. Then take a tennis ball, put it under your foot and press down as hard as is comfortable and roll it around. (oh, come out of uttanasana first) Really massage the underside of your foot, then do the other one, then find uttanasana again. Can you fold any further? Anyway, that was what I was paying attention to before and during a lot of my practice.

So I practiced by the pond this morning hoping it would be warmer than my apartment, it was a little better. But motivation was a roller coaster. One salutation I would be ready to quit, the next I wanted to keep going. Once I hit Trikonasana I was finally into it. I paid a lot of attention to this line throughout my practice and found it to be quite helpful. At one point, I think I was in Janu A, I could feel the tug in my hamstring and just lightly in my lower back so to test the SBL theory I tucked my chin to my chest, thus lengthening the line, and I was amazed at the extra stretch I got in my lower back but only on the side of the straight leg. It was pretty cool. With all the forward folding in the primary there was a lot of chances to observe and play. The sun finally burned through the clouds about the time I was in Mari D, speaking of Marichyasana, I bound comfortably in B again today and went a little further in D, and after an extended Supta Kurmasana (more observation of the SBL) I looked up to see to does having a drink across the pond. A hawk floated over right before Urdhva Dhanurasana and I was really glad to be exactly where I was. The rest of the practice was simply absorption of my existence in/with everything around me. Sirsasana included a lovely, but upside down, view of the Shawangunk ridge over the pond and trees.

The motivation is still up and down at work. I did get all my new welding toys today so I can start playing with some steel and hopefully start building furniture again to make a little side money. I’m shuffling off to Buffalo for the weekend as I didn’t make it last weekend to finish cleaning my house out before the buyer moves in on MONDAY! Thank God it’s done…