Lobotomized Housewife: Ambien for the Insomniac Soul

I can't seem to stir things up anymore.

It's not that no one reads this drivel; my stats are still quite impressive for a personal yoga blog (not as impressive as "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic, Yoga" or whatever it's called, but WAY more impressive than, say, a certain
schoolmarm's blog). It's more that no matter what I say, no one seems to want to call me out on it anymore. Either that, or everyone just rolls their eyes and says to themselves, "Yeah, well, that's just YC."

Or, possibly, the worst case scenario: I've simply lost my edge. I mean, I've thought about ways to piss ya'all off in order to inspire some debate, even some flame-throwing. I even requested the right to post on that bastion of dizzying asana obsession and Hildebrandt/Tebb worship - the Ashtanga Voices blog, to which I shall not provide a link, because I have still not received my posting privileges and am not holding my breath either. I figured that even if I wrote nicely balanced, fairly unbiased entries, I would by my very presence there, incite debate, or at least witty repartee, since I am not quaffing from the same Kool Aid as the other bloggers over there. Let's just leave it at that.

See? There, I did it again. I could have written something really really incisive just now, and instead, I chose to cloak my feelings in ambiguous terms that won't be likely to set off any alarm bells amongst those who don't already know what I am talking about.

Has the country life really turned me into a butter knife? Or perhaps finishing Primary has truly enlightened me, like I always knew it would? Or perhaps it's because I'm not yet practicing Second Series, so I haven't acquired that hypo-manic quality that sometimes seems to accompany those first brushes with XTreme Backbending?

Speaking of which, Valerie, came up to me today sometime in the middle of my practice and told me that every Updog is another opporunity to backbend. And that she's not a natural backbender...either. Either. Is it that obvious? I kind of sort of hate the fact that I am so obviously backbending challenged. On the other hand, I more than kind of sort of LOVE the fact that I have something really really ridiculously challenging to work on now. After Supta Kurmasana, I didn't know what would occupy me anymore. For whatever reason, I didn't really think of Urdhva Danurasana, Full Wheel, as an asana at all. I have always thought of it more as some stupid filler task that I have to phone in between my last pose and the finishing sequence.

Sometime over the weekend it dawned on me that UD is actually a pose that I have to master in order to get the next one. And that even if I can perform a reasonable facsimile of dropping back and even standing up from dropping back, I still can't really backbend properly. It still hurts. It's still something to dread. It's still awkward and quite unpredictable. And so I finally succumbed to the notion that I need to learn how to backbend, finally. That now it is time. And the beautiful thing is: I get to do it between six and nine times every day, not just once a day, like when I was learning Mari C, Mari D or Supta K.

Maybe some of this acceptance comes from the fact that Valerie's shala is so steaming hot that by the time I get to the end of Primary, I'm so drenched that I can't bear to think about lengthening my practice, or worse, having someone come near enough to me to help me not fall over in Pasasana. I just want to get down to business - do my backbends and finishing poses and change into something dry. I'm not complaining. It is what it is, and besides, it's a welcome respite from the (by comparison) non-sweaty home practices.

Since every teacher seems to have their own version of dropbacks, I thought I would put a note here in about the way Valerie has me do them. It's three on my own, and then she sometimes comes over and helps me in the third, pulling my shoulderblades into the proper angle, encouraging my thighs to rotate inward. Then she drops me back with my hands up, rather than with my hands in prayer under my chin, to encourage the chest opening, three times quickly. Next is three half-backs, followed by a full-back to the head, although I think she re-thought having me do that half-back, full-back part since I almost brought both of us down the first (and now last) time we did it. Sobering experience, that. Another reminder of how badly my backbends need some rehab .

"They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no...." - famous last words from Amy Winehouse.

Yep, still lobotomized. Sorry ya'all.

Oh, wait...I have something! Those British people who killed their adorable (what child is not adorable though?) four-year old daugher, Madeleine, stashed the body and then disposed of it some three weeks later, leaving the blood in a rental car? Totally guilty.

YC