Well, I took a little break from blogging. I just don’t have the talent to make every daily blog about yoga … interesting. Some people do, but I even bore myself.
I’ve had a few other things going on in my life – including working on my relationships a little bit. I’ve been looking at how and why I become emotionally attached to some people, and at what point that turns into an unhealthy attachment that does not serve my highest good. Like I said, had a few other things going on. 
This caused me to take a couple of extra days off from yoga over the past few weeks, so I’m now further behind on my challenge than I expected I would be. But that is life. What I love about the Yoga, though, is how each day I get to assess where I *really* am emotionally, outside of what my conscious mind tells me.
I’ve discovered there are certain postures which are more or less challenging, depending on where I am emotionally or psychologically, and which serve as indicators for me of just where I am that day. For me, they are Eagle, the four one legged balancing postures (Standing Head to Knee, Standing Bow, Balancing Stick, Tree), and the two Locusts (half & full). Eagle tells me about my relationships to certain people in my life, and how well I am managing them. The balancing postures tell me how I feel about standing on my own feet – whether I feel competent to manage my own life that day, and whether I feel, well, ‘balanced’. And if I’m simply feeling overwhelmed by whatever emotional commotion I’m experiencing, it’ll show by me feeling completely nauseous and weak in the Locusts. So each class is a new discovery – am I strong today? am I balanced today? am I sad & sick & lonely today?
The thing with Eagle right now is more than a bit frustrating. Eagle used to be super-easy for me. I could wrap my raised leg around my standing leg with no problem, my foot easily hooked around my standing calf, on both sides; and it felt good to wrap my arms around each other to free the shoulders (my tight tight shoulders love Eagle). But then my hips began to realign, and the LEFT hip tightened up – so first side of Eagle, standing on the left foot, I could no longer get my right foot around my calf, and sometimes I completely fall out; I’m only now, after months of this backsliding, beginning to occasionally wrap my right foot back around my left calf. I still have pain in the left hip. Right side’s still pretty easy to wrap, but I still lose it occasionally. So funny, because it was one of the only postures I could manage when I first started, and on the surface it’s almost as though the yoga has stiffened my joints rather than freeing them. I recognize that it all has to do with realignment, and that eventually it will improve to the point where I find myself stronger and more flexible than when I began, but the irony of feeling that I’m moving backward instead of forward is not lost on me. Such is life – we think we’re moving backward when we’re really moving forward. One day we wake up to discover we’ve processed out a lot of old feeling, and we have actually leapt forward.
In other yoga news, I really am feeling as though I’m finally moving out of the plateau stage I was in for so long. Just in the past few days, I’ve experienced my hamstrings finally (finally!) stretching – I can actually straighten my lifted leg in Standing Head to Knee. This is also indicative of a slight release in my shoulders, as well. In Hands to Feet (last part of Half Moon), the pain and stiffness in my hips is lessening, and though it still takes pretty much the entire first set to get completely positioned to start the stretch, I am able to move right into it in the second & my legs are getting closer and closer to straight. I discovered last night, just goofing off at home, that I can – for the first time in my adult life – bend forward with straight legs and place my palms on the floor. This is quite extraordinary. I’ve always said my legs were too long and my arms were too short. The palms weren’t totally flat, but still. So, what do loose(r) hamstrings mean? I’m not sure yet. I’ll figure it out eventually.
