Developing a Home practice, Part 18 Niggling injuries

A month ago I decided to take a break from Intermediate. I've had a niggling twinge in my back all year and thought perhaps that if I gave back bends a rest for a month it might finally clear up. It's nothing much, feels more like a small bruise but just doesn't seem to want to go away. Thing is I wasn't sure if it was back bends or LBH that was aggravating it so I pretty much gave LBH a rest too. On top of that I came down heavily from a poor Karandavasana attempt last week and landed on my knees in Lotus, bruising them. So that was no back bends, no LBH and no lotus or half lotus, sigh.

I think I've been lucky and managed to avoid injury until now. Of course there where the odd slightly pulled muscles here and there which were irritating. One in my hamstring that seemed to take forever to go away. It's annoying having one eye on how your hamstring is feeling throughout a practice, trying not to go into poses too deeply on one side. Funny enough I seemed to manage to walk it off in Paris. I would walk miles all over the city listening to Podcasts and it started to feel better rather than worse.

Hate reading about injuries in other blogs, so afraid of damaging my wrist or knee. It was a knee injury back in the 80's that forced me to give up Aikido. The thought of damaging my wrist and having to cut out jump backs and handstands altogether scares the hell out of me and makes me wonder if my practice could survive it.

But it did survive a 'Time Out' on back bends. Luckily I'd watched Sharath's Primary DVD again and wanted to tidy up my primary anyway. I completely fell in love with the series all over again, cutting out all my fidgeting and shifting about. Learnt to jump back from half and full lotus too and would jump back and through with alternating legs and even straight into some asanas. Nice, really nice.

As an extra I worked on coming up from Karandavasana with some, if not complete, success. And when I landed on my knees in Lotus last week I just dipped into 3rd series and played around with all the arm balances to make up for no Back bends or Duck. Really looking forward to third, I'm thinking 2ND for the next six months and then move on to it in January.

Last Tuesday on my day off, and to cheer myself up, I worked through 3rd up to Viranchyasana. Kind of playing at each pose really, just to see what I would be up against and what I most need to work on developing in preparation for it. Of course I have a long way to go with the LBH asana but it's coming and should be good enough by the new year. The arm balances were fine, but then I expected that to be my strongest area, plus I'd done some of the poses in The Rocket. Hanumanasana is the only asana that I think 'No way'. But then how many asana have I thought that about. I think 3rd will become my favourite series. I like the idea of doing two of each series a week one day, I've no interest in going beyond that, don't see the point of fourth, too.... pretzely, though I quite fancy Sayanasana and Punga Kukkutasana.

So basically I've been distracting myself from the niggling injuries and have managed not to get too down about it. Yesterday I started 2nd again, approaching it in a much more relaxed way. Where before I would end up doing three or four Kapo's and four or five Duck attempts, Yesterday I just went through the series and if I got the pose first time fine, if not, well then there's always tomorrow.

Nice practice. But exhausting! I ended up sweating a kilo and a half, why is that????? Surely Primary is more demanding, with a jump back every couple of minutes. because I didn't push it my back felt fine. Kapo I was back to just touching my toes, and I couldn't bind left leg first in Dwi pada, Oh and couldn't come up in the Duck, but otherwise it was a nice practice. I managed to gotthrough it in an hour, so no problem practicing before work. I can even throw in three or four drop backs though I seem to have lost coming up but it'll come back. Once you know you CAN do something it's much less frustrating. The plan is to practice 2ND four days a week and Primary twice for the rest of the year. Wish Sharath would bring out an Intermediate minimalist DVD so I can work on tidying it up but then there's Kino's to look forward to at the end of the Summer.