And sure enough a big dark swelling on my head appeared. It was as big as a ping pong ball… I had to use my hair to cover it…

What happened was that we were doing partner yoga. One person was in downward dog ( AdhoMukha Svanasana ) and the other person was in “L” pose with the legs stepping on the hip area on the person doing down dog. I was in downward dog and my partner was supposed to do the “L” pose. It was a case of pure accident. My yoga partner was just preparing to go into “L” pose by stepping her leg onto my hip when the teacher asked us to move back to the mats. So without realizing that she was moving her leg back, I lifted my head. *WHAM* The foot kicked into my head. I know she did not mean it and probably felt bad about it but she should have looked before putting her foot to the back.

So lesson learned is that we must be very conscious about what the other person is doing when helping or doing partner yoga. Check and communicate with each other constantly in order to assist. This is very important when the other person is a complete stranger and you do not know the level of practice they are at. And if you have no confidence on helping, then please, please do not try to help. You might cause injury to the other person instead! Instead ask the yoga teacher to assist or teach you how to help instead.

Must get the hirudoid that Shirley suggested… seems to be great for healing bumps and blue blacks… must “sink” the ugly bump!

OM~

Technorati Tags: AdhoMukha Svanasana, yoga teacher, hirudoid

Yup… I hit my poor head onto a opened locker door. I did not noticed the opened locker door by this girl who was there…
Wham… the corner of the locker door into my head… today it really hurts.

What’s the worst part? After I knocked into the door, she still sat there with the locker door opened…. I wonder how many people have knocked into them when people left them open. Closing the locker door is just a 1 second job and it could save many heads into bumping into them. I am just thankful that my eye was not poked by the sharp corner of the locker door.

nursing my poor little head… a little blue black bump has appear…

OM~

I was able to go into Hanumanasana on one side finally and able to go out of the pose without feeling this pulling pain in the muscle. The cure is just to stop the strenuous exercises and just rest ( although in my case I still do a lot of walking in Taipei while I was there… in fact did some climbing of mountains that left me blisters in my feet! )

The absence of my daily yoga practice during the 8 days left me less strength and energy. I could not hold a pose as long as before.
But that can be corrected easily now that I am back!

OM~ it’s good to be back.

Technorati Tags: Hanumanasana, yoga practice

Ego’s doing or my insensitivity to my own body?

Somehow when I do my Reverse Warrior, there is a tiny pull in the inner thigh muscle somewhere on the front leg. It is a sour delicate pain that swirl up along one strand of my thigh muscle. Go figure…

I also realized that I cannot go all the way down to Hanumanasana. That strand of muscle just refused to coorporate. Is that strand of muscle trying to tell me something? I am still trying to figure out what did I do to pull the muscle… The only 2 asanas that cause that strand to complain. Otherwise, the rest of the asanas was pretty much ok.

Hence, I took a break from yoga today to let that strand of muscle rest. I wish muscles can talk, so that I can know exactly what was wrong and why it was painful and how to avoid it. Perhaps they do but just so subtly that the conscious mind does not hear them?

I wonder…

I am keeping my fingers crossed that I get back to normal soon.

OM~

Technorati Tags: Reverse Warrior, Hanumanasana

Anyway, I suspect the culprit is my soft big pillow. When I turned my head to the left and turn to the right, I can feel the pain in the right side of the neck, running down to my shoulders. Hence I stopped going for yoga for 2 days to give the neck muscles some good rest. I started sleeping on my yoga block too! ( ha ha … )

It is times like this that I realized the importance of a healthy body which I took for granted. With that nagging pain, there was so much discomfort in doing your daily stuff and work. This is such a tiny irritation but this made me realize that I am so much luckier than people who have lost the function of their bodily parts.

Which is why in the last 1 month, everyday I wake up and give thanks. Serious. Everyday. Just thanking for the fact that I have a family who loves me, my parents are healthy, I have a roof over my head, I am healthy, I’ve a good education, I can do yoga everyday etc. Counting my blessings, so that I will not take them for granted. It is a good practice much like meditation and brings me to be more appreciative and less irritated with the daily naunces in life. Try it! Give thanks for all the things in your life and mean it.

OM~

*I am half cured… now head turn left no more pain… hopefully tomorrow all will be well ! Weeee….

Technorati Tags: standing split, Urdhva Prasarita Eka Padasana, yoga block

As it turns out, we were doing visvamitrasana pose anusara styled by holding the lifted leg with the hand (see picture here : Shiva Rea calls it the super pose…). It’s like doing the sundial pose while doing vasisthasana aka the side plank. Apparently even though I can do the normal sundial pose, I cannot do it in this pose. Some how I managed to pull the pectoral muscle running up my left chest.
During the 1st 2 days, I thought I had pulled some muscles near the arm area that is connected to the chest as everytime I move my arms overhead, my chest muscle hurts. Then at times when I move my left arm, there was no pain. It seems as if it was ok and I have recovered. However when I go back into class, the pain came back. This was just too weird and I kept trying to figure out why it was so inconsistent and it comes and goes so fast. As I told my friend, I always have weird funny problem ( like last time when I could not bend my knee in full pigeon )
Just the day before, I realised that the pain was not caused by the left arm. instead it was due to the muscle that is connecting from the left chest towards the head. So once I lift my head up as in like upward dog or cobra pose, I can feel the pain along that muscle.

At one time it was so painful that I cannot even do the upward dog or the sun salutation. Luckily the pain is almost gone now. That is one lesson learnt – every muscle in your body is important and crucial + never let your ego get ahead of yourself.

And I am thankful of all the concern and help by all my yoga friends when they knew I had this problem.
OM~