Friday, September 12, 2008

83/87 Ike Pt. 2

10:30 am with Miranda

The evacuation ended, people cleared the roads, and the studio was open at least for the morning.  20 die-hards showed up for one last yoga class before hunkering down.  (Does anyone hunker for other things besides hurricanes?  And is it possible to hunker in any other direction?)

Class was a mixed bag.  I was surprised at first at how hard it was to keep my focus.  Panic is contagious.  And though I would say that I was, and am, far from panicked, my practice told me that I was far from being in balance.  I was certainly way off of Wednesday's high.

On the plus side, my hip felt better again.  And my knee was a little more flexible than usual.  This is an area where the storm is also having its impact.  Right now I'm feeling a bit stiff in both knees, and I think that is mostly the low pressure.

Nothing in class was particularly strong.  The standing series was below average because of lack of focus.  And the floor series was middling.  The best pose was probably the second set of Half Tortoise.  My hips stayed securely on my heels, and I had a very nice stretch forward.

After class, as per usual, I felt really good, and I'm really glad I went.  In contrast to the other people I have been talking with, it was nice to be around sane people who were not overreacting to the storm.  Their presence at the class was testament enough to that; and their generally relaxed attitude confirmed it.  So, just as panic is contagious, its also possible that sanity has an infectious quality.

Prospects for the challenge look bleak at this point.  No classes tomorrow, which will put me five days behind.  Sunday is up in the air, and it will depend on whether there is power in the area.  The media are hoping for power outage catastrophes, since they now almost have to admit that Ike will not be as disastrous as they wanted.  But even if the predictions of two weeks of power outages is way over the top, it would only take a couple of days to make the 100 day challenge impossible to achieve.  

Even as it is, I don't know how I would manage to do five doubles in eleven days.  One thing has occurred to me:  I've been wondering what to do after the 100 days are up.  If I'm still behind, I can go on a reasonable schedule of doubles interspersed with my daily classes until x = y in my x/y tally in the title.  Then I will have done a challenge of even greater than 100 days.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"(Does anyone hunker for other things besides hurricanes? And is it possible to hunker in any other direction?)"

great questions! must be the texan in me, but i LOVE the phrase and how stupid it sounds!!!

Anonymous said...

Hey Duffy,

You left a reply on a log I started on the Yoga.com site, I go by Blackdog there. Thanks for encouragment. Your on day 100!!! Right on!!!! I have the beginning of Sciatia, you said you have had it. What is your experience with the Sciatia has it dispearred due the the Yoga?

Take care
Bryce (Blackdog)

Duffy Pratt said...

The long answer about my sciatic problem is found in the blog itself. The short answer is that Yoga caused the problem, and then Yoga cured it. Basically, I was doing some of the forward bends wrong. This caused strain on the periformis muscle in my hip (and I almost certainly misspelled that). The muscle strain in turn put pressure on the sciatic nerve. Over the last 4 weeks, I have almost completely worked through the problem by focusing on doing the poses correctly.

I have complete faith that the Bikram series would eliminate any run of the mill sciatic problem.