Today’s Lunch: Seated Postures

This morning, I came to my mat in a lot of discomfort. Possibly from yesterday’s full primary on Dave Robson’s much longer breath count, but more likely from too many weeks between chiropractic adjustments. To be honest, this soreness has been building for a couple of weeks now and, although I have been hitting my mat daily, I could feel more than one area of my spine which didn’t quite seem to move as easily as it used to. After about 35 minutes of the sequence, which equated to the Suryas and the standing poses, I abandoned all efforts and sat down on my mat to meditate.

I resisted the urge to beat myself up for giving up on it so early on. I just let it be and got up for my morning espresso.

A couple hours later, I found myself longing for just a little more. Without a change of clothes, I found myself headed towards the yoga studio with plans to pop into mysore in my jeans for a do-over. If I only did the Suryas again, I would have been happy but… as I got closer to the studio I remembered that Friday’s practice was lead Full Primary and I was too late to join. *sigh*

My chiropractor managed to find all my stiff areas and got them all moving again by the time I hopped off his table. My low back was still feeling stiff as I drove off to work – but the rest of me felt better. I immediately began devising a plan to roll out my mat during my lunch break. The package of tuna in my file cabinet would have to suffice for nourishment as it was movement or eating (one or the other).

I found an empty conference room at lunchtime and began going through the motions at the top of the hour. I immediately noticed the difference in the range of motion in my upper back. I went through Surya A & B then moved straight to the seated postures as I’d done the standing series already today. I celebrated successfully getting my ankle to tolerate Marichyasana B and C on my left side – the first time in ages. I finished up with Navasana and stopped there as my break was over.

It was all good. Feeling relief, I returned to my desk.  And it didn’t matter that my tuna package was only a measly 80 calories worth of nourishment. I was sure I could find something else to satisfy my need for food if I needed to. For it seemed that today, it wasn’t food as much a movement that my body was hungering for.