Out of action

OK, I give in , take the hint. It seems a break from practice is called for.

It's been one thing after another. First the inflamed coccyx problem making sitting postures uncomfortable and forcing me to drop my leg behind leg poses (also laying off the serious backbends). Then we had the slipping on the platform, slamming shin into side of train issue. Leg was pretty cut up and bruised, thus culling the 'On one leg' postures, binds and basically Ashtanga altogether as I didn't want to get it too sweaty.

Now It seems I have a tooth abscess which puts my beloved headstand and inversions on hold as well as the macrobiotic experiment ( can't chew).

I did manage to Sit last night though which was interesting. The drugs (Nurophen plus) only seem to take the edge off the pain but I found that if you employ the Vipassana trick of actually focusing on the pain you can get some peace, for a while at least.

Here's the trick. This kind of pain has a throbbing character and the actual pain seems to be on the beat of the throb. If you focus your attention on the off beat then there's a space between the pain. Keep your attention there on the 'spaces between the notes' and they start to string together, the non-pain seeming to dominate the actual pain. It's Jazz. I wonder if that's how they do it in the Vipassana for pain management books, be interesting to look into that, something in it perhaps.

Of course once you let your mind wander the pain comes back and it hurts like hell, kind of like the monk in the Zendo's who walks around with his baseball bat giving you a bop every time you start yo drop off.

I thought last night that it looked like a photoshopped 'before and after' makeup. The right side (looking at the picture) after I started practicing Yoga and the left how I looked three years ago before I took it up.

Before / After yoga