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Mar. 22nd, 2009 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikApparently it behooves me to do handstands every day.
The last couple of weeks have been kind of challenging. In no particular order:
* Kendrick shifted his schedule twoish hours later. (This is an improvement, really - if we're not going to be on the same schedule, it's easier for me if I'm up first and to bed first than the other way around. But it's more random and has called for some schedule shifting on my part... and I'm kind of suggestible when it comes to other people's schedules.)
* I learned/invented a better way of resetting the vertebrae around T5-7 that keep getting out of place. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stolen_tea and dymaxion, remind me to show you this one.) This is an area I could get into before... but the new technique is faster, more precise, and generally takes out a lot of the guesswork.
* The issue on the right side of my upper thoracic, which had been always there but generally not a big thing for ages, is going through some kind of transition. I *think* that it's heading towards better - it seems to be spending some time in really good alignment, but when it's out, it's much more likely to hurt. This isn't bad - I mean, I don't want the wrong alignment to be too comfortable, y'know? But the stability is weird, and it costs me sleep and energy.
I think what happened is that a lot of the upper body work I'm doing in yoga had been priming the upper thoracic issue to get better (though getting better for me often seems to mean going through an annoying transitional phase). The mid thoracic bit is involved in that pattern - I think it helps maintain stable but incorrect alignment pattern. (Which is actually a help - stability is important, and stable and only minorly painful is way better than unstable and/or majorly painful. It's all about process.) So working on the mid thoracic stuff might have accelerated the transition.
Anyhow, if I want this to be stable I need to maintain sufficient tone in a bunch of scapular and upper thoracic muscles (and, er, others - I haven't quite figured out all the players in this one). Otherwise, it will go out while I sleep. And all the work I'm doing on chattarangadandasana helps, and the backbends and bridge... but whoa, it's all about the handstands.
My handstands are getting much better. I'm usually getting up the first time, even if there are other people around. (Not so much a problem in class - I got up my second day. But... well, I'm still reluctant to do them when people are around, say, in the annex. Kendrick mostly doesn't count... And it does help that I can come out of all of my inversions gracefully.) My headstands - which also seem to help, though it's a subtler effect - are also getting better. I still do them near the wall, but I don't actually use it... but if I did them in the center of the room (especially if anyone was around) I might be just enough more tense that they might not work. I'm happy being slow about these things.
The last couple of weeks have been kind of challenging. In no particular order:
* Kendrick shifted his schedule twoish hours later. (This is an improvement, really - if we're not going to be on the same schedule, it's easier for me if I'm up first and to bed first than the other way around. But it's more random and has called for some schedule shifting on my part... and I'm kind of suggestible when it comes to other people's schedules.)
* I learned/invented a better way of resetting the vertebrae around T5-7 that keep getting out of place. (
stolen_tea and dymaxion, remind me to show you this one.) This is an area I could get into before... but the new technique is faster, more precise, and generally takes out a lot of the guesswork.* The issue on the right side of my upper thoracic, which had been always there but generally not a big thing for ages, is going through some kind of transition. I *think* that it's heading towards better - it seems to be spending some time in really good alignment, but when it's out, it's much more likely to hurt. This isn't bad - I mean, I don't want the wrong alignment to be too comfortable, y'know? But the stability is weird, and it costs me sleep and energy.
I think what happened is that a lot of the upper body work I'm doing in yoga had been priming the upper thoracic issue to get better (though getting better for me often seems to mean going through an annoying transitional phase). The mid thoracic bit is involved in that pattern - I think it helps maintain stable but incorrect alignment pattern. (Which is actually a help - stability is important, and stable and only minorly painful is way better than unstable and/or majorly painful. It's all about process.) So working on the mid thoracic stuff might have accelerated the transition.
Anyhow, if I want this to be stable I need to maintain sufficient tone in a bunch of scapular and upper thoracic muscles (and, er, others - I haven't quite figured out all the players in this one). Otherwise, it will go out while I sleep. And all the work I'm doing on chattarangadandasana helps, and the backbends and bridge... but whoa, it's all about the handstands.
My handstands are getting much better. I'm usually getting up the first time, even if there are other people around. (Not so much a problem in class - I got up my second day. But... well, I'm still reluctant to do them when people are around, say, in the annex. Kendrick mostly doesn't count... And it does help that I can come out of all of my inversions gracefully.) My headstands - which also seem to help, though it's a subtler effect - are also getting better. I still do them near the wall, but I don't actually use it... but if I did them in the center of the room (especially if anyone was around) I might be just enough more tense that they might not work. I'm happy being slow about these things.
