Take me to the river...put me in the water...

Today the whole Yoga Chickie family went to the Sports Club/LA for their Sunday Family thingy. The Husband took the kids to the rock climbing wall and to play basketball, and I took the led Primary class with Evan P. It was fine, if a bit dumbed down for the mass consumption.

Observations:

• It is difficult not to look in a mirror that is right in front of your face.
• In every single posture, there is further for me to go, more for me to learn, more for me to open. I could work on Primary my whole life, I think, and never really be done with it.
  
• Supta K....ah, why repeat myself?
• Today I got my wrists through my lotus legs in Garbha Pindasana without hiking up my pants and adding water. YAY! Hopefully, the lotus will continue to "blossom" so that this the elbows will slip right through by the time Sir gives me this posture. Meanwhile, today was the first day I ever tried rolling around in a circle, and voila, thanks to Evan's instruction to roll back on the left side and up on the right side (I think that's what he said...how soon I forget...), it was totally do-able. I was amazed. I didn't know how I was ever going to be able to do that.
• I am actually really getting somewhere on my jump backs. This is shocking to me since when Julie K did her workshop at Shala X, she claimed that it took her seven (7!!) years to be able to jump back. So I figured that was a good estimate of how long it would take me. Maybe I was wrong?
• And here's the biggie....WATER IS GOOD. After class, I went down to the pool, expecting to spend 10 minutes or so in the hot tub. Well, somehow, the actual pool looked incredibly inviting, even with a few kids splashing around (not mine). And so I took the plunge. Let me be the first one to admit: I am a terrible swimmer. But it felt so good to approximate swimming. Breast stroke, back stroke, a little Australian crawl (that's what it used to be called...I don't know if it still is). I felt light, loose, soft, flexible. Usually within a half hour or so of finishing my Ashtanga practice, I am already contracting and getting tighter. But the pool...oh! I can't sing its praises enough. After some laps, I started doing aquatic tic-tocs. It is probably the closest I will ever get to actual tic-tocs in this lifetime. But it was so nice.

Now, I have to figure out where I can swim regularly. I believe that swimming could unlock my shoulders and chest once and for all. How is it that I never knew this? HOW?

And a final, really scary realization: the reason I have always been a really lousy swimmer is that I have ALWAYS been tight across the chest...scaaaaary. I can no longer blame it on breast cancer, double mastectomy, radiation, whatever else I have been blaming it on. The piss-poor, stiff, cockeyed arm-motion I call a "crawl" is the same piss-poor stiff cockeyed arm-motion I always had, even as a kid. It's a wonder I ever was able to do gymnastics or make the cheerleading squad. I guess the tightness got worse over time. But I realized today: it was always there.

Now, to unlock it.

YC