Every blog starts someplace, right? With some introductions scattered like breadcrumbs through the archives, with some idea, with some thing, however inchoate or broadly or narrowly or vaguely defined--with some need to communicate to someone something somewhere.
Me? I am now sharing with you that I am very aware of a moving pain in my right shoulder. It's a blocky mass that's been there for years--I blame it either on repressed childhood trauma OR a terrible but persistent habit of lugging around a 50-lb. tote bag on my right shoulder. (They do tend to be massive black hole type things--I once dipped into it and found a roll of packing tape a full month after I'd moved---and I hadn't even seen it once that month.) So, usually I just live with it, and it gets better and it gets worse-r, but in the past two classes, it's moved around. It's now someplace around the outer point of my shoulder blade. Is this normal? It's far from agonizing--it's even pretty far from annoying, but it's there and I hope it's a sign that something is releasing.
After tonight's PACKED class--seriously, about 75 people were packed in, it was FULL FULL FULL and hot hot hot, and people who were obviously regulars in a certain spot were getting all twitchy (I practiced next to one of the teachers, who calmly set up next to me in the very back, calmly set up her towel and calmly did her thing as best as she could in every moment. It was very nice to watch) I feel energetic.
Which is nice, if new, because usually I feel a little bit forked, as in stick a fork in me, I am DONE. I sat out more poses than normal (ha! normal! but really, I do try to do at least one of each set) and tried to use Shavasana more, and tried more consciously to keep my breathing normal, steady and through my nose. All of which helped, I think, and all of which redirected me to the mindgame that is a Bikram class. Can I stay in this environment calmly? Yes, more often than not. Can I be positive about what I'm asking myself to do? Yes, more often than not. Am I twitching, fidgeting, making more out of this, telling myself not to do something, giving myself permission to quit, labeling something "pain", "fear" or "aaaaaaaahhhhthissucks"? Well, yes, more often than not. A gentle turning of the mind to the positive seems to be an asana, as well. So I tried to do that, too.
I have loved things that were difficult, too, in the past, and they ended up redirecting my life. And I find myself, a kapha, Cancerian, luxury-loving diva of a middle-school teacher, loving this, too. There's something beautiful about the choices constantly available in each moment that are more clearly visible to me in that room. There's something about the power available to me at the end, the very end, where I have slain the beast of discomfort and torn down a brick or two of self-limitation and loved myself and the people around me for, where I feel like my intention is clearer and more real and more powerful than in any other arena of my life right now.
Damn, I just sold myself on going to class again.
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