Hey, watch that adjustment!

I think I may have solved the mystery of the pain in my lower back, which arose in practice this morning. As we do our Surya As and Bs, we usually stop once for the folks on one side of the room to go across to the folks across from them and give them a down dog adjustment. Then we stop once for the folks in the row that was adjusted to go over and return the favor.

I've never met the gal who gave me an adjustment today, but she sure dealt out a weird one. Where you usually put your hands on the down-dogger's lower back and then press up and back, perhaps pressing your body evenly up their spine, my adjustor put her hand square on my upper back and pressed straight down. As if she was adjusting me into a face plant. Then she went around behind me, grabbed my lower shins and pulled toward herself, hard. Kinda like pulling my legs out from under me.

I was surprised and also perplexed, wondering if perhaps this was some new-fangled adjustment I'd not seen before, or maybe the way another school of yoga adjusts or something.

It occured to me as I woke from my nap (I figure lots of stuff out in the hypnogogic state) that the strange adjustment may have set the back pain off. I asked The Cop to help me verify--I got into down dog and he pressed straight down on my upper back. Yup, it makes the spasmy place in my back go crazy. So this begs the question: How do I make sure it never happens again? Do I scream if someone I don't know ever tries to adjust me? LOL! That would be kind of funny, but probably disruptive. I'm going to ask Volleyball Guy on Monday. Not like I'm not already paranoid about getting adjustments from people I don't trust. Which I am. But I try to be a good sport. Apparently there is a middle ground here that I need to define more clearly.