And no, it wasn’t yoga that is the cause of all this malarkey but Mother of Pearl, I am one sore yogini today.
The cause of my distress is my massage therapist, Julie, an otherwise lovely woman who masquerades as the Marquis de Sade’s younger sister. For some reason, over the past 4 months, the fascia on the left side of my body has decided to tighten up. It showed up first on my radar screen in late February when I went into One Legged Pigeon. The right side was fine; the left side was not so fine. I couldn’t even approach the pose and very quickly came out of it rather than risk an injury.
To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought much of it. Although I love it, Pigeon is not something I go into a lot.
But as the end of my teacher’s training came, I found my body was not being as co-operative. I assumed it was because my daily practice had pretty much gone to pot and I’ve really only resumed it this past six weeks and the left side of my body is decidedly less flexible than the right. Today’s massage session confirmed it. Julie agreed, the left side fascia is much much tighter. The IT band and the outer quadricep is bound as is the left tricep. So what to do? I’ll figure that out tomorrow. Right now, I’m very fatigued and I hurt like a son of a gun.
The treatment was very painful. So far today, my practice has consisted of sitting in a hot tub, feet flat on the floor of the tub, spine straight and breathing. I think today it’s going to be 20 minutes of meditation and calling it a day. It’s not so much that I’m being a wimp — I’m just honouring the principle of Ahimsa — non-violence towards myself.
Thanks for reading and Namaste,
Kate
