Tuesday, September 9, 2008

81/84

4:30 pm with Miranda

All day my knee and hip felt really good, so I was expecting them to be much more flexible in class.  The hip was better than its been, but the knee was not so good.  I was almost back to square one again in Fixed Firm.  It's really puzzling how this goes.  Anyway, after class everything feels great again.  

I had a strange emotional experience in class today.  I put my mat next to a woman who I instinctively dislike.  I have no idea why I don't like her:  it may be something about how she looks, or something in the way she carries herself.  But, through no fault of her own, she just puts me off.  And I would like to make clear that I don't think this dislike has anything actually to do with her.  I'm sure that its my failing.

Anyway, it got to my practice.  We would go into Savasana, and I would notice that she wasn't with it - that she was adjusting things.  Ordinarily I notice nothing at all about other people in Savasana.  And even if I did, I wouldn't be judgmental about anything.  This was really bad, and I'm not even sure if there is anything I could do about it.  I'm thinking that when I see her again, I will need to make an effort to be friendly to her, just because the whole thing is so irrational, and it has not happened in any of my classes before with anyone else.

Class was pretty standard for the last couple of weeks.  Some poses a little better, and some a little worse.  The low point was a foot cramp in Camel, which knocked me out of the first set.  When I get these cramps, it usually means that I worked extra hard in the back strengthening series, so its hard to get too upset about this cramping.  

Ever since Tu talked about engaging all the hip muscles in Cobra, the entire back strengthening series has presented a new level of difficulty, and my back has the same sort of soreness that it did when I first started Bikram -- that sort of delicious sense that things are getting stronger and straighter, a pain that is fundamentally good.


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