Setu BandOWsana

Last night, as we were watching a really cool documentary, I started noticing that I was really sore. I was a dedicated weight-lifter for almost 20 years, so I am accustomed to muscle pain, but I've never been sore in these muscles before. They're the ones that run down your neck and under your collarbones. I didn't think about it all that much, and went to bed.

In the middle of the night I woke up, sore as hell, and all the muscles up my spine were sore, too. And it dawned on me: setu bandhasana. I flashed on practice yesterday and remembered that when I did setu bandhasana, I noticed with surprise that my hips were really high and that more of my forehead was on the mat than usual.

Admittedly, I am usually kind of a setu bandhasana slacker. I'm usually thinking about backbends at that point in my practice. Plus, setu bandhasana seems a little dangerous to me, so I pretty much go at it with little ambition and figure it will eventually evolve on its own. All of this adds up to pretty low-key attempts at the pose. But somehow, yesterday, I seem to have really gotten into the pose more fully. Silly me :-)

Today I'm taking the Moon Day off. We'll spend the day with The Cop's parents, who are leaving tomorrow at noon. I imagine we will eat a lot and drink. Sigh. Eating and drinking a lot are really rather challenging pursuits.

Oh, and the cool documentary we watched last night: The Story of the Weeping Camel. About a Mongolian family that tries to help a mother camel accept her baby. The two young brothers of the family take a journey through the Gobi to find a violinist to perform a ritual the elders say will cause the mother to accept the colt. It's a fascinating movie, beautifully filmed, and the people are just lovely. Check it out.