A new backbending prop

Another 1 hour evening practice.

Focusing on mulha bandha while moving through the Surya Namaskars intensifies the flow of prana.  My body takes on a brightness, lightness and strength.  Jumps are soft, light, floaty.

Then my phone rings while transitioning from Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana A to B on the first side, and I abandon my leg while in the air.  It’s my son, so I answer.

Note to self – phone gets turned OFF from now on during yoga practice.

I get back on the mat, bandhas, breath, rhythm, flow, energy…all gone.

Oh well, let’s do backbends.

Salabhasana, Dhanurasana, Ustrasana twice, Supta Virasana, Setu Bandha.  I press up into Urdhva Dhanurasana, arms won’t straighten.  I feel heavy.  I try again.  The second one is usually better, but not tonight.

Thick, tight shoulders again. 

How to release them?

I try a handstand with my fingertips 40cm away from the wall, sort of an arching backbend.  It doesn’t quite work.  I come in closer to the wall, kick up and arch my lumber to drop my back thighs to the wall, still trying to stretch open my shoulders. 

It doesn’t feel good, or safe.  I come down.

I spy the esky at the end of my bed (yes, an esky) and it already has a yoga mat draped over it.  This is set up so my little Buffy has a halfway place to jump when getting on and off my bed.

I pull the esky near the heater and lay over it lengthways taking arms over and back behind my head.  A strap is over my elbows to keep my upper arms parallel.  I lay and wait for the release. It’s not too bad actually.  We often laid over the side of a stage during Iyengar classes, with crown of head and forearms on the floor, knees bent and feet on the stage, then we'd flip our legs overhead, through a headstand and down onto the floor.  They were good, solid classes.

Wriggling backwards down the esky, I try to get into a supported Dwi Pada Viparita Dandasana with my forearms on the floor but can’t quite get there without pressurising the top of my head.  Not good.

Enough for tonight.

Headstand: 10 breaths balancing with head barely touching the floor then I allow weight on my head and stay in the pose for a while.

I sit in half Padmasana for a long time - perhaps ten or fifteen minutes.

It is quiet in here, after yoga, inside my head.  Perfectly balanced, hauntingly silent, I am looking out from inside the central point of a spinning top, from deep inside the eye of a tornado.  This vast peacefulness is familiar.  I remember it, I have missed it, this silent, fathomless abode that is home.  The yoga is working.  The amnesia is lifting.