Hurt So Good

This morning I got up and went to an 80-minute led ashtanga yoga practice. This means that there's a teacher, but he's not really there to teach you how to do the practice (it's assumed that you know), he's just there to talk you through the poses. I've been going to Ashtanga more lately and I think I do have a pretty good grasp now on the Primary Series, but this was my first experience in this type of class. There were three other women there, all of whom are more advanced than I am. (If you want to see some of the crazy stuff Ashtangis can do, check out this video.)

I've been asking myself why I'm drawn to Ashtanga again at this point in my life (it was my first yoga love). It's a really vigorous practice, requiring at least as much strength as flexibility, and that may be two of the reasons right there:

1) Constitutionally, as evidenced by my fiery red hair, I'm mostly fire (or pitta), and thus I'm drawn to the more fiery kinds of yoga practice.

2) I'm more about strength than flexibility, both in terms of what I have access to in my body and in my general temperament.

I'm raising a daughter with that same mix of qualities, and this, among other things, is prompting me to try to work more on my flexibility. Which leads me to a third reason I think I'm drawn to this practice right now:

3) A lot of the poses in the primary series are about opening the hips, and I've known for a long time that I've got a bunch of old energy stuck there. As I work my way through this practice, though there are many poses I can't do because of those tight hips, I am aware that I'm asking my hips to release, over and over again, not like a nagging kind of asking over and over again, but like a gentle source of encouragement: "It's ok. That's it. Let it go. Open up. Release. Ahhhhh."

I'm not actually to the "Ahhh" part yet -- just ask my sports chiro. I specifically went to see him after going to yoga, hoping I'd be more open and more able to release, and I think I was, a little, but he still said: "Man, you're holding on tight there."

Just what it is I won't let go, I don't know. I can venture a guess about when it got stuck there, but I don't have any kind of conscious idea about what's stuck or what I'm afraid will happen if I let it go.

My chiro was telling me he has another chiro friend, who he describes as less fact-based, (I'd say more woo-woo) and his friend says it's all about the three Ts: toxins, trauma and thoughts. For yours truly, I'd say it's trauma that reigns supreme, especially where the hips are concerned, but I could probably also be a little more positive with my thoughts.

Like at this morning's yoga class, during a difficult balancing pose on my more stable side (which is my left), I heard myself thinking: "If you think this is bad, wait til we get to the other side!" Let's just say I can think of more supportive thoughts to have in that moment.

About two-thirds of the way through the practice, when I was getting really tired, I had this nagging feeling that maybe some of my low back pain is related to my Ashtanga resurgence. I don't know if it is or isn't, but I do know what song started to play internally -- sort of an odd one as a soundtrack for yoga:

Hurt so good
Come on baby, make it hurt so good
Sometimes love don't feel like it should
You make it hurt so good

Which got me thinking about when I sang this song as a child, and my mother, without my asking or really wanting to know, explained to me what it meant -- a mildly traumatic event in its own right:

Don't have to be so exiting
Just tryin' to give myself
A little bit of fun, yeah
You always look so invitin'
You ain't as green as you are young
Hey baby, its you
Come on, girl, now, its you
Sink your teeth right through my bones, baby
Let's see what we can do
Come on and make it hurt

Hurt so good
Come on baby, make it hurt so good
Sometimes love don't feel like it should
You make it hurt so good

Here's hoping I'm not hurting myself through this practice, but I am shifting things around, and hopefully letting go of what I no longer need...