Favorite yoga pose: Half Moon.

Today, I'm copying my friend Rebecca over at An Optimistic Explorer. She has done a series of her favorite workouts and exercises on her blog that I have inspired me. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right?

Back in March when I went to back to Bikram yoga, I was really worried about my back. I knew I would be able to do the forward bends (but they sort of freaked me out also; I dread coming out of them and feeling any twinge of pain down my leg!), but I worried about the backward ones. To my surprise, I came out of class with my back feeling stronger and more functional than it had in a long time.

Not wanting the effects to wear off, I started doing a few of the movements at home. The pose that I guessed had helped the most is Half Moon Pose. When I went back a few weeks ago, the instructor gave a very important command: always start this pose with your feet and legs together tightly, and with the weight in your heels. This will position your spine so that when you bend to either side, you are going over in a straight line, and not leaning to the front or back. I did this pose incorrectly for two weeks - it was amazing the difference I felt when I started from this position.

Don't die over how cute my outfit is...

In half moon pose, you stretch up tall with your arms over your head, your hands clasped with your index fingers pointing to the ceiling. Then, stretching up and out of your hips, slowly compress your right side while stretching your left. Try and keep your arms over your head and your face exactly between your arms. Slowly reach to the side, keeping your legs tightly together and remembering to push your hips forward to keep the front and back sides of your body upright. A good visual is to imagine that you are standing inside of your walls, with sheetrock in front of you and in back of you, so that you are only moving side to side, not forward and sideways. Hold for 10-20 seconds, allowing yourself to get used to the position.

Slowly raise yourself up to standing. Repeat on on the left side - your right side will now be stretching long and your left side is compressing. Hold 10-20 seconds and come back to standing.

Next you are going to reach behind you. I find that with the first back bend, I can stretch farther and my back is happier if I support my lower back with my hands as I bend backward. I'm not sure what a Bikram Yoga instructor would say about this, but I do it anyway. I start by allowing my head to fall back, then slowly bend backward as I look at the wall (or couch/child/window/whatever) behind me. It is very hard to breath in this position, but try and keep breathing. Hold for 10-20 seconds then slowly roll up to standing.

I support my back on the first time around.

The second time around, your arms will be above your head. Violent shaking is very common in this position!

The last position is actually a yoga pose in itself, but it is always done in the half moon sequence. It is called Hands to Feet. But first, roll down slowly until your hands touch the floor in front of you.  Do a few deep squats here to open up your back and your hamstrings. Keep your feet and knees together. I also like to hang my head down and feel the stretch down the back of my neck.

When you are ready, put your butt up in the air with your legs bent deeply. Grasp the backs of your heels with palms - your fingers should be underneath your feet. Rest your belly on your thighs and press your face to your knees. Now start to straighten your knees until you feel a stretch down the back of your legs. Bring your elbows as close together as you can and pull up on your heels - the tension in your arms will help keep you from tipping over. Keep your eyes open as you look very closely at your shaved - or, if you  are like me, unshaved - shins. Don't worry if your legs are not straight (I have yet to get mine straight) - you just want to feel the stretch down the backs of your legs and in your lower back. Remember that Bikram is typically done in a room that is 105 degrees - the heat allows your to stretch farther, so don't push yourself too much without the benefit of the heat.

Hold for 10-20 seconds. Let go of your heels, clasp your hands together with your index fingers pointed up, and slowly roll back to standing. Finish your pose by lowering your arms back to your sides. Take a few deep breaths.

My pajama pans don't allow you to see how much my legs are bending in this pose.

Repeat all four sides. I typically don't hold each pose as long the second time around. I also notice that I can usually stretch a little farther for the second set - my back has done all its popping and adjusting to the movement and so it feels really yummy to do it again.

I was reading on the Bikram website about the back bends that are used in Bikram Yoga, and something struck me as good sense. As humans, we are always bending forward - seriously, think about how many times a day you bend at the waist. Our vertebrae get more than enough work moving forward. To keep a healthy and happy spine, we need to move our backs in all four directions so that we don't only use our back to bend forward.

I can feel a difference in the month or so since I've been practicing half moon. I love to do it when I am warm and loose after a run. I feel like my core is a lot stronger, and typically, my back will feel mostly happy for a few days after I do this pose.

I hope you enjoy this! Let me know if you try it. Be patient and listen to your body to avoid injury.

Currently:

Eating: Cinnamon Pecan Special K cereal. The pecans, the pecans! So tasty.

Wearing: soggy running clothes. Ran 5 miles today so I can start getting ready for Bloomsday next month.

Shivering:  see above, key word "soggy."

Watching: Call the Midwife, season 3. My love for this shoe is huge. And thanks to the PBS app, I can watch it on my phone!

Excited for: Mad Men season 7, which starts next Sunday. I probably shouldn't like the show so much, but I do. I can't wait to see what happens this season. Shane read an interesting theory about Don becoming DB Cooper and starting a new life. I don't know that I want it to end this way, but it explains all the airplane references on the advertisements for season 7.

Drinking: water. I gave up soda for lent.

Reading: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, a book about photography, a book on Bikram Yoga.

Waiting for: The last book in the Daughter of Smoke & Bone series to come out next week. I am so glad I didn't find this series earlier - I hate waiting forever for the next installment. I might have to buy it though, I'm number 41 on the waiting list at the library, and they aren't really good at getting the new books out right as they are released. I am impatient to find out what happens!

Practicing: taking pictures. I am taking bridal and wedding photos for my brother-in-law and his fiance in July. I got a new lens (which was a necessity - my last one was broken) and I've been practicing. Thank heavens for the library - I found a great book on the basics of photography and I am learning so much. Now if I could learn how to make heads or tails of Photoshop, we will be in business.

Loving: the new wall hanging I got at Pier One last weekend. It only took me four years to hang something on my bedroom wall! (Well, other than a TV, ahem.) I made up two pictures from Italy of doors that I need to go pick up. I'm going to try and mount them on canvas and made them look like they are canvas. Wish me luck - the directions on Pinterest included the words "modge-podge" - I'm in trouble.

Longing for movement

Shane and I almost never watch award shows, but this year we ended up seeing most of the Grammy's and the Academy awards. I typically watch for a few minutes, then read my book/look at my phone/sew on something, so while I heard Pink singing her Grammy-nominated song Try, I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on on-screen until about halfway through when Shane said, "You should probably be watching this." So I did, and then I loved it so much that I rewatched it, and then I watched the video and bought the song, and now I am blogging about it.

(But first: have you seen her Grammy performance? Here, I'll give you a link. Pink - Try. Or, even better, watch the video for the song. It's a big gritty, but oh so good.)

Something about this song makes me feel something big. Part of it is about movement itself. I cannot separate the movement from the music. I listen to the song in my car and while I run and as I walk from the train to work and while I do chores around my house. Sometimes I just watch the video and it feels me with a longing for movement that I've had my whole life. It's what took me from turning cartwheels in the store to doing gymnastics for hours every day. I filled my high school and college hours with dance of any kind, and now I substitute running and yoga and the occasional improv combination in my kitchen. Music and movement are inexorably intertwined, and I combine them to give both my longing for movement and my actual movement context and memory and feeling. 

The other part is the story that is told in the video (mostly the official video, but it is hinted at in her Grammy performance as well.) Maybe it's just about a really crappy relationship, two people who fight and fling themselves at one another and cause physical pain on a regular basis (but even at that level, I still appreciate it - Pink is an incredible dancer.) (I get so jealous watching her. I almost don't want to watch because I wish so much it was me being that amazing.) But I read the movement as the complex emotional dance that is our life: the stops and starts and sometimes violent crashes that happen between humans. It makes me remember the desperation of last year - of wanting something, of fighting about it all the time, of no one winning, of trying every day to get back into step with my life. It felt like every day, I was flinging myself at my husband, at my expectations, at my anger, only to feel the weight of them flinging back at me. It was messy and discordant and a little bit ugly. The words in the chorus - where there is a fire there is going to be a flame, where there is a flame some one's bound to get burned, but just because it burns it doesn't mean you're gonna die, you've got to get up and try, try, try - they get me. I feel them and I remember and I think about the burning that didn't burn me up. And I think about how movement during most of that time was a solace that I didn't have. 

And so I when I listen to the song, I think about it and where I am now. I didn't burn. Or maybe I did - maybe the part of me that so desperately wanted that life with the third baby was burned away. I let her go, and something new came out of from the ashes. A new chapter grew into not just my life, but my family's life. We aren't the same four people. Events and people and places came out of last year that I know wouldn't have happened if we had made a different choice. 

I think I like it so much because somehow, its lyrics and movement allow me a sense of nostalgia. Strange that I would feel that, since it's like picking a long-ago healed scab; why do I want to keep remembering? Maybe it's because of what I can see that came out of it. Maybe it's gratitude for the less-frantic dance I am currently living. Maybe it's the mobility that I have now, and the way I don't take it for granted the way I did before. Maybe it's just that I really, really love modern dance, and that I appreciate the symbolism of the colors that stain Pink and her partner by the end of the video.

I sort of can't decide where to jump on this post. Am I being all fan-girly about Pink? Do I just really like dance? Am I jealous that I don't look like her? Is it the remembering of last year? I think yes, to all of them. So, in conclusion, I guess I should ask: do you remember your painful times of life with a sort of fondness? Do you like Pink? Do you giggle a little at how big Nate Reuss's feet look in his part of the song?