Sometime last year I tweaked my back. I think it was Fall, possibly earlier. It wasn’t a big thing. I even remember when it happened. I leaned into the car to grab a bag — groceries or the junk I cart back and forth to work — and I felt a little twinge. Nothing to make me gasp in pain. Just a twinge right between my shoulder blades. (My “wings” as Holiday would say.)
I would wake up every morning with a stiff, slightly painful back. It didn’t impact my life in any sort of major way except for minor discomfort, mainly in the morning. The biggie was yoga practice which had to be modified immediately. I stopped doing all the more advanced stuff I’d been working on and invested a lot of time in very basic stuff, trying to loosen that scrambled up part.
This wasn’t such a big deal except it seemed to take FOREVER to feel better. In December I was still modifying my practice, skipping advanced poses, spending 3/4ths of my time just trying to loosen up.
On December 31 I did a workshop with Holiday and she talked about impatience with our practice (greatly simplified for the purpose of this post) and I thought about it and finally came to the conclusion that: maybe this is my body now. Maybe I am going to be stiff when I wake up. Maybe I’m going to have to invest a lot of time each day just trying to loosen up.
Very shortly thereafter, it dramatically improved. Is it yoga-voodoo? You decide. All I know is, my back feels 99% better and I can get into all sorts of crazy bendy stuff that I haven’t been able to do for months and it is fun. This morning I didn’t even want to stop but I had the writers coming over and had to cut it short.
I publicly express gratitude that my body feels better.
