Chronic Soreness

I am chronically sore from practice.

For some time I've questioned whether or not this should be the case. In the end, I accept the soreness as a consequence of the type (vinyasa/Ashtanga), duration (75-90 minutes), and frequency (5.5 days a week) of my physical practice.

When I say soreness, it's neither joint pain nor sharp pain, but rather a chronic ache in the muscle belly (bellies), as I have always felt following exertion. Indeed, I find that this soreness doesn't seem to limit my actual practice, but it's certainly discomforting during the rest of the day I'm not practicing. What I initially failed to recognize is that for decades, when I used to bike 100 miles a week or run 15 miles a week, I somehow accepted chronic quadriceps soreness without too much question, but because my yoga practice today hits all body parts (all encompassing), it's not just my quads that are sore but often many muscles simultaneously, and for a time I questioned if this was acceptable. I questioned it.

Questioning.  Like when I walk down my stairway at 6:30 in the morning and I can barely manage even while holding the handrail, I ask "What the fuck?  In three hours I'll be holding myself up on one leg in Vira III for 45 seconds but right now I can't walk down 13 steps?"  This is my age speaking; my forty five years on this rock is most certainly a factor here, too.

I do take days off and my practice is varied, in that on any given day it could be Ashtanga or a vinyasa flow such that I don't think the soreness is related to continuous repetition of the same sequence. And I'll feel it pretty much anywhere I happened to work it earlier -- primarily the quads, but often the hamstrings or pectorals or lower back if I've worked the backbends hard.

To the extent that I find joy in my practice, I also find acceptance in the soreness related to that practice. This concept speaks to me. My love of yoga includes accepting this condition, to the extent that I find it serves me. I see this as qualitatively different from pain. When I do experience pain, I back off. However, as a new student of yogic philosophy I have read where "tapas," literally heat, but taken more broadly as the acceptance of such uncomfortability (sic) that perhaps might lead to purification, can be a catalyst for growth. I have begun to accept the uncomfortable feeling associated with intense stretching while in asana in the same way I've accepted the chronic post-practice soreness associated with a vigorous and frequent practice -- in that I am trying not to necessarily run from it, but rather accept it within the framework of a safe yoga practice. I am trying to stay with it. It most certainly isn't easy for this new yogi but it does seem to get easier with time.

There are a few things I'm working on to combat this chronic condition.  One - focusing on breath.  I believe that this might be the primary key to solving this. I shall take more efforts to improve this component.  Two -- awareness of how I'm feeling during asana after particular foods and beverages -- too much coffee?  Mango skins?  Oatmeal?  Are any of these any worse or better for my direct practice, and can I notice the difference afterwards?

Mindfulness

Thoroughly enjoyed the 60 minutes segment this week on mindfulness. I've been practicing (and struggling) with meditation for the last two years in combination with a physical yoga practice that has been completely transformative.

I use yoga as a tool, in the same way Zinn uses walking meditation, etc., to develop awareness. Awareness of my physical body and the emotions (thoughts) that are associated with it. My purpose for gaining this awareness is to cultivate acceptance -- acceptance of my limitations, my strengths, my desires, but ultimately, to access the bigger things inside -- purpose, peace, and perhaps even that elusive spark of divinity.

Mindfulness is, or can be, simply another path towards that. It was presented as a seemingly new idea but indeed, I believe it to be a practice nearly as old as humanity.

Key Largo Yoga

My first vinyasa class was on a Monday morning at 8:00.  I was on vacation in the Florida keys, the first and only time I had been there, and we were staying in Key Largo.

It wasn't particularly hot or humid that May morning. I walked south from my little beachside motel on the bay side along the Overseas Highway for about 7 minutes, crossed the street to an early 1980s-ish looking two-story office building in the median, the sort of building you'd find on virtually any main highway street in any city in the U.S.  There are probably two hundred thousand of these exact buildings around our suburban nation, and this particular one perhaps held a small realty office on one end, a paint store on the other, a Notary's office sandwiched in-between, you name it...but upstairs in the middle was the yoga studio, and I had arrived a full half hour before class to a locked and dark door.

Not too long after the teacher arrived, Lauren Ferrante, who took me in and had me fill out the typical newcomer form saying I won't sue the studio should I fall out of Sarvangasana with a C4 fracture.  I will say this -- Lauren was the exact sort of person I had always held resentments against -- and was the exact sort of person ironically who would help me, over time and indirectly, to no longer hold such resentments through yoga practice.  She was impossibly good looking, and for this 230# middle aged, unfit man I found myself immediately forming judgments against her.  Indeed, these judgments were entirely about me, about my own inadequacies, my own desires.  I cannot stress how uncomfortable I felt in that room for the next fifteen minutes until another student arrived.  These will be the topics of several dozen future blog posts.

I hadn't brought my mat with me on my flight, and so I rolled out the thin Gaia mat I'd picked up at a Target or some such store.  I may have had a water bottle.  It strikes me as austere compared to the ritual I perform today in prepping my little yoga space.  I had no "yoga wear" -- just cotton shorts and a heavy cotton short sleeve Carhartt t-shirt, the only shirts I always wear everywhere.  These, it would turn out, would become quite miserable quite soon.

I cannot say I remember anything about how the class started, how many yogis came, how it ended, if Ujjayi was even suggested or if I tried to follow it (although I'm sure it was), and really, I don't remember any particular postures.  I only remember that she maintained a connective flow between poses with a fairly regular transition between them.  I know this today as vinyasa, the connection of body movement with breath.  At the time I did not have this understanding. Although I was familiar with sun salutations, I had never experienced such yoga before.

For what little I can remember, I today rate that 75 minute event as among the most epiphanic moments of my life.  It seemed vaguely aerobic, a practice that developed flexibility through strength.  The combined humidity of south Florida, and the heat generated by a dozen yogis resulted in saturated cotton clothes (pretty heavy!) and an ice-rink of a mat with all that sweat.  But I loved it.  I loved the exhaustion I felt, the feeling right after the muscle shaking subsides, lying in Savasana.  I had always loved working out but this was entirely different than riding the bike 20 miles, or running a few laps or lifting weights.  I was smitten.

After class, Lauren said to provide feedback to the studio owner as this was her first class she'd taught.  I now think she meant the first she'd taught at that studio, but either way, there were several firsts.  I remember going back the next morning, with her admonishing me to take it easy, as I had told her the day before was the most difficult class I had ever taken.  I don't think I took it easy.

I was able to get to four or five classes that week; I don't remember the exact number, but I do know that on the third visit I bought my first Manduka eQua mat towel, something today I must use in any heated studio.  I just recently donated that very towel to another yogi at my local studio who was unemployed and said she couldn't afford a towel.

A Brief History of Time

Here's my yogic history in a few paragraphs:


I've been riding my bicycle along Franklin Blvd. as a commuter for nearly 20 years now, and eight years ago I started work at SMUD. About that same time, I had fairly chronic lower back pain presumably from riding. Perhaps it's better described as muscular soreness, not pain really, but there were days sitting at work where constant fidgeting simply couldn't relieve the discomfort. I knew my next door cube mate had been attending a company sponsored yoga class and seven years ago I asked him about it, and showed up one day.

It was held down in the basement of our oldest building in our cafeteria after work on Wednesdays. I do not remember my first class. In fact, this is why I wanted to start this blog -- precisely to archive things that I would otherwise forget. All classes were led by Ali, who today still leads employees through a basic yoga series twice a week.

What I do remember about that class -- about 15 people who attended regularly and mostly my female co-workers. In that basement cafeteria the seed was planted. The class was a great introduction to yoga...and little has changed over the last eight years. A varied sequence each week, Ali will typically begin in Tadasana, move through modified Surya Namaskara, a few standing sequences, some floor work perhaps, and she will always end the class in an 8-minute Savasana, usually while providing mental relaxation queues as we're resting.

That kept me going for about 5 years, never more than twice a week. I built my own wooden yoga blocks in my workshop, developed my own little routine at home to practice on my own here and there, and more or less never "improved." I was riding my bike 80 miles a week, and every week I'd bring the same tightnesses (sic) and weaknesses to class; however, I did learn the process.

Between 2011 and 2012 my illicit drug addiction grounded me from all exercise and I gained 50 additional pounds. I stopped all drug and alcohol use two years ago tomorrow, and at that time I told myself to lose a few pounds before going back to class. In hindsight, I would never recommend that to anyone -- one is never too fat to practice. I began 2013 with a moderate bike and yoga routine.

But everything changed on May 20th, 2013. We were on vacation in Key Largo, I had been practicing on my thin little mat in the beach motel parking lot at night, trying to avoid attention, that sorta thing. I guess I wanted more. So via the web I found keylargoyoga.com, which happened to be a 5 minute walk from the motel. I absolutely remember that first class -- a harder vinyasa flow than I had ever experienced and at the end I was lying on the mat, exhausted, sweaty and I had instantly, and I do mean instantly, fallen for vinyasa. (From their web, Lauren Ferrante was the teacher who led that class). I received adjustments which I had never had before...and it was on.

Within a week of returning home, I discovered One Flow vinyasa yoga studio very close to work and I now practice five to six days a week there, at my Monday work class, and in my own backyard (or living room on rainy days). I would characterize my practice as an Ashtanga variant -- I will often attempt and sometimes complete the primary series at home, will always get in the Ashtanga salutations and standing series before Ali's class, and then my One Flow practice is my shake-things-up practice where I get a varied sequence every time I get on the mat, and as importantly, One Flow has given me an awareness that yoga extends far beyond the physical practice.

Them That's Got Shall Get

This is the first post of my own successful restoration to good physical health through yoga.

 

My purpose is twofold; one, to encourage anyone to take up yoga and two, to document my own transit:

• Anyone -- to look at me riding up Franklin Blvd. you would not (even remotely) suspect that that overweight, balding, rather unpleasant looking guy has discovered a genuine physical and philosophical system that has completely changed who he was prior to 2012, and that he is precisely "anyone."
  
  Document -- in the past eight years I have often had a goal to "complete a real forward fold," and at some point in the last year I "declared success" -- I got my palms on the ground.  In hindsight, I now realize I will always be working towards completing a real forward fold...but I still want to document my progression.

As I have built myself back up physically, I have returned to the principles of living that I once espoused, somewhat obtusely, on my other long running but abandoned blog GoneSolar.  I loved blogging about American's propensity for resource squandering, passive acceptance of horrible urban design, with the occasional political commentary thrown in...but I also did it for posterity.  I enjoy looking back on the person I was, the person who thought those thoughts and who wrote them down, even if they do or don't at all represent who I am today. 

 

Will I be the same person in 2018?  While I today hope so, I bet I would have said the same thing in 2011 about today...and indeed, I am so glad I'm not.  This is the value of blogging to me -- not for you, but for your Monologuonian -- so I can see today the person I was, and hopefully keep the things I like and eliminate that which no longer serves me.  And there's a lot that didn't serve me!