Exorcism

The visit to My Gift's soon-to-be new home went really well. "Well" in the sense that she is happy and excited and that the kids at the college seem just terrific. My Gift, having spent four years in high school in Scottsdale, happily reported to me that she did not see a single Coach purse or Louis Vuitton accessory during the entire orientation period. Yup, it's a hippie school. My Gift will have such fun.

That being said, it is not all fun for me. Obviously there is sadness in the realization that My Gift will no longer live with me. Yes, I will be happy for her to go off on her independent life, and yes, yoga will help me process this change. But it'd be much easier if yoga would process it FOR me, and I didn't have to think about it/feel it. Do they make that kind of yoga?

First night, My Gift and I stayed at a hotel in town. A small place--functional but not particularly roomy. And carpeted. No readily available source of coffee. Which meant practice did not involve my waking up and having coffee and reading. Nope, it was wake up, leave off the lights so as not to disturb My Gift, step onto the mat, try not to breathe too loudly--and...ow! Yeah, so apparently the 45 minutes I spend reading and drinking coffee before practice actually has a small, but significant, warm-up effect. I'm a homebody introvert, so new (dark) environment, new schedule, My Gift leaving me forever, no coffee--it all added up to one crappy practice. It would appear that I am unable to bend at the waist without a little caffeine.

Oh, I soldiered through, but just the standing poses. Then I cut my loses.

Day two involved spending the night at one of the dorms. I was on the second floor, My Gift was on the seventh. Why don't they put grates over the windows? How will My Gift get enough rest when it is so loud around here? What if she feels sick? Who will look after her? Yeah, that's a pretty good approximation of my night. Plus the beds are these things that you can stack into bunk beds, and I was on one that was about five feet off the floor. And about half as wide as a single bed. After I worried about My Gift, I thought about how I might fall out of the bed. After I moved the mattress to the floor, I worried about fires in high-rise buildings. Might as well spend some time worrying about The Cop's job. I haven't done that for a while. Hey, what if I oversleep and don't practice tomorrow? What if My Gift is falling out of a window right now? Ah, what a lovely night.

I woke right at 4:30 and did another practice through standing, then called it quits. Who was I kidding? The dampness in the air was killing my hamstrings and my mind was pretty much berserk. Honestly, I think the practice really helped, at least as much as possible under the circumstances.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to get to Mysore this morning. Volleyball Guy, with his usual, rather uncanny ESP abilities, snagged me for two early (and very intense) adjustments: trikonasana and parivritta trikonasana. I know, those are so simple and who adjusts in them, right? Well, he was dead on: for some reason, the hip/hamstring thing I have has been at its absolute worst in those two poses. Like, killer pain.

So, like I said, Volleyball Guy adjusted me in trikonasana. "Exorcist" adjustments, where your body is turned backwards from normal human. It hurt like a mother, and then it felt great. And as he was walking away, apparently he intuited that the only thing hurting worse than trikonasana these days is parivritta trikonasana. Yeah, hurts worse as in exponentially worse. So he came back in for another super-adjustment. There is something really special about the amount of pain your teacher can inflict on you, and how good that can make you feel. Yes, I know that sounds like masochism. And perhaps it is. The rest of practice absolutely rocked, though. It was like he wrung the pain out of me in one fell swoop. Even the My Gift pain felt better.