Home Practice: 8/14/06

Wake with a burning sensation in both hamstring inserts. Not good. Home practice today--no Mysore, as Volleyball Guy is out of town.

As usual, the morning begins with coffee and some reading:

When a person faces the great doubt, before him there is in all directions only a vast and empty land without birth and without death, like a huge plain of ice extending ten thousand miles.
--Hakuin

Decide to use the space heater, to try to bribe my hamstrings with heat. Think this might be a bit crazy, seeing as we're in the desert and all, but tough times call for tough measures.

Practice totally revolves around the pain. Poses of particularly excruciating note are: padangusthasana, padahastasana, parivritta trikonasana, and the most horrifying of all: the prasaritas. By the time I get to prasarita B, I decide to try bending my knees a bit. Seems to help. Not sure if this is kosher or not, but the pain to pleasure ratio of practice is starting to list hopelessly toward the pain end of the continuum, and bent knees are the only solution that comes to mind.

Plod along, making note of the "sensations" ;-) and trying to back off just a bit, until marichyasana C, at which point I finally start to feel some relief. Decide to really be diligent about icing four times a day for a while (I'm sitting on ice as I type this entry). How can I spread the stress of stretches throughout the whole hamstring? Why does everything seem to be converging at the inserts?

A quick note about the dinner party at The British Director's house. It wasn't such a big collision of worlds. I met The British Director's boyfriend, who, like The Cop, is not an Ashtangi. I think by the end of the evening both he and The Cop probably felt pretty satisfied that we aren't all members of a cult.

The British Director, I am very happy to report, is one of those people who reads cookbooks for pleasure. Gosh, can she cook! There was grilled salmon and a mango salsa, endive and avocado salad with mustard dressing, quinoa with corn (my favorite!), pasta with pesto sauce, and bread. And The British Director's boyfriend, who will from here on in be called The Wine Connoisseur, chose and served some unbelievably good wines.

Also in attendance: Mr India and The European Beauty, Volleyball Guy and Sanskrit Scholar, Chanting Man and The Cat's Mom, Crim Girl and her consort yet to be named. It struck me that The Cop might feel like he was in the movie "The Big Chill," and I leaned over to whisper that to him. "What's 'The Big Chill'?" he asked. Never mind.

A lovely time was had by all. The Cop felt slightly out of his element, though he enjoyed himself. Perhaps like he was with a close group of hippie-ish friends. You know, like in "The Big Chill"? Okay, okay--never mind ;-)