Dawg!

Before I forget: I was very interested, when watching John Scott's DVD, to note that when he does utkatasana in surya B, he's doing a squat so low that his thighs touch his calves. At least that's how I'm remembering it. Granted, it was Saturday night and I was having a drink while I watched. God, I really do have an Ashtanga problem ;-)

My problem this morning was my left hamstring. It is very strange: I am still not sure if this is really an injury. It may just be an "opening." Please tell me the concept of opening isn't just a sham...

So here's the deal: Monday morning Mysore. First surya and I notice my left hamstring feels achey and like it's shorter than the right hamstring. Okay, this isn't too unusual, and it generally works itself out by the end of the suryas. Not today, though. I had this persistent, distracting feeling that something was awry with the hamstring, though it wasn't a sharp pain or anything like that. It just felt "off." My mode of responding to pain is to proceed, so I worked my way through the trikonasanas and parsvakonasanas, though I never really settled into it --my mind just kept telling me I felt weird.

The real fun started at the prasaritas, where the achey feeling actually made me feel really nauseous. Cold sweats and everything. Strangely, though, no really distinct pain. And, since my mode of responding to nausea and cold sweats is to proceed, I continued on. LOL! Yes, it's funny in retrospect.

I limped through the first half of primary, after deciding that I would accept that my hamstring wasn't going to come around, and that I could spend my energy putting some effort into my urdhva mukha svanasanas (John Scott does an inspiring urdhva mukha svanasana in each vinyasa, and I've caught the fever ;-) Super lame poses on the left side, totally distracted mind--ah, but lovely upward-facing dogs...LOL!

I gave up at navasana. Volleyball Guy came over and rubbed my hamstring for a bit, then set me up to do paschimottansana on two sandbags so that they could dig into my hamstring inserts. Mmmmmm. That feels good. No, it hurts. No, it feels pretty good. No! It hurts! Thus went my internal monolog. Clearly this is a kind of pain I don't know how to qualify. I really think it is just the playing out of an imbalance I know I have in my hips. It's been there for ages, as a result of a number of sports injuries on the left side of my body. When I first started Ashtanga, I grew increasingly aware of the imbalance, which had, over the years, just come to seem normal to me. So now I am (as Randy Jackson would say) workin' it out, dawg.

Or maybe I'm injured. Who the heck knows. Volleyball Guy is being kind, I feel bewildered, but also pretty patient about it, and in the end, I can have vastly improved urdhva mukha svanasanas.