Day 25: Old lady

As I was suffering last night, I was thinking to myself how this challenge has been wrought from Day 1 with well, "challenges".  From back pain in the beginning which turned into the flu followed by weeks of fatigue and knee pain and now back to back pain again ~ the few fabulous classes in between have kept me going along with the support of all my yoga friends and my husband who actually helped me get dressed this morning because I couldn't bend down.  I will be honest and admit that more than 1% of me considers packing it in, regrouping and trying again later but last night I learned so much from my excruciatingly painful class. 

I am not being Little Miss Melodramatic here.  When I say excruciating, I mean it.  It was so painful and I had to be SOOOOOOO careful and I was so SLOW.  In the floor series, by the time I actually got in savasana it was time to get out of it again.  It would take what seemed like FOREVER to just get the first part of the posture particularly anything forward bending.  But here's the gem I learned:  when working with an injury it is impossible to do anything BUT the RIGHT way.   Granted it is slow and deliberate but I feel like I learned so much from my practice last night.  I learned new ways to suck my stomach in and keep it sucked in. New ways to lock my knee through the hips, quads, the THIGHS, ankles and calves.  Why the hell does Bikram say lock the knee when in reality you are locking the LEG??? LOL.  I learned new ways to be patient with myself to build the muscle necessary to do all of these things without "fudging" it.  I learned that when I can't even do 1% the right way then THAT is the time to sit it out and lay in savasana and get the benefit from the gas station needed to try again next time.

I am currently sitting at my desk with a heat patch on my back, drinking water and feeling my heart beat through the muscles in my lower back.  Throbbing.  I just took my next pack of advil and will take one more at noon.  Then let it go until you guessed it - YOGA.  There's no way I'm not going. It feels so good once I get into the posture even the forward bending ones.  I just have to take so much time to get there. Oh well, then that's what I do and where I am today.  Who says the stubborn Taurus that I am can't be patient??? 
On an interesting note, when dealing with physical pain, the emotional stuff subsides. Interesting. Tonight I have no where to go and nothing to do afterward so I am going to just relish savasana then saunter home and perhaps take a long, hot bath that this OLD lady body will probably need help getting into and out of - "HUSBAND!!! Can you help me???"  LOL.