OUCH

Didn't make it to practice AGAIN this morning, and I feel distressed. I have been nursing a very low-grade cold for the past few days (the kind you get when you're a grownup and have had just about every cold that exists, and as such, have pretty much developed immunities to most of them, so that when you get hit with a germ, you get a mild version of the cold, but you still feel like crap generally). And all over my back, there are pains and aches of various sizes and intensities. My sides ache to the touch, and my shoulders are stiff. But the worst of it is across my sacrum. Perhaps it is my sacro-iliac joint. Perhaps it is the muscles of the lower back. Logic dictates that this has everything to do with the new intensity with which I have been practicing my twists, particularly parivritta parsvakonasana (which is infused, I have to admit, with some degree of impatience and unhealthy desire to place one palm on the floor and extend the other over my head, oh why oh why is it not happening....NOTE TO SELF: STOP THE MADNESS.).

But the hypochondriac in me taunts me with the "what ifs". What if it is not muscle but bone? What if something is "wrong" with my spine? Get my drift? And so, instead of practicing through it, which would probably be the right thing to do, I got 10 hours of sleep last night (hoping that sleep would help the healing process of whatever needs to be healed) and instead of practicing today, am sitting on my sofa nestled against a heating pad.

The good news is that the heating pad feels AMAZING, which leads me to believe that this is nothing more than muscle aches, possibly exascerbated by the fact that I have a cold (things always ache when I have a cold).

Tomorrow, I have Winter Solstice at school, so no shala for me tomorrow either. Hopefully I can make it there on Tuesday. I think I should forbid myself to practice until Tuesday. Is resting really so bad?

YC