I’m 4 days into an involuntary and strict 6-week “no weight on your left arm” lifestyle adjustment.
This is a problem.
You see, for the last 6-ish years, I’ve done yoga nearly every day. Some days it’s only 10 minutes, or on the really bad days, only 5 (even one down-dog held for 30 breaths can do wonders). But I still do it. I rely on it. SO MUCH. I can’t remember how I lived before I did it, to be honest.
(Okay, that’s not quite true. I remember. I was a lot more stressed and a lot less balanced. It wasn’t fun.)
And so since my radial head fracture diagnosis, I’ve been trying to figure out how I can still do my morning yoga thing while not making the fracture worse — because the Doctor was 200% clear that that’s pretty much what I have been doing the last 6 months, as I repeated sun salutations and made a bad thing worse every time I encountered chatturanga — even with just two sun salutations, that’s a lot of pain (“I just need to strengthen it! It’ll get easier over time!” -me, in my head, three weeks ago) and a lot of more-messed up bone. 🙁
For the last 4 days, I’ve been trying my morning yoga routine sans mon bras gauche.
It’s really quite the challenge.
It means I’m doing almost entirely floor yoga — on my butt — interspersed with a few standing poses. But I have to be careful even moving from one pose into the other. It has made me acutely aware of how much I use my arms to bear my weight when just transitioning from, say… baddha konasana to camel pose. Even doing that without using my left arm is tricky and requires concentration.
I don’t mind spending so much time on the floor, to be honest — especially since I took up running. I hate what running is doing to my hamstrings, hip flexors and rotators. I’m focusing more on pigeon, knee-to-ankle pose, forward folds, happy baby, and frog pose. It’s all good.
But it’s not the same. I miss down dog already. I miss cobra. I miss headstand and side angle pose.
I feel like I’m doing yoga lite. And it doesn’t feel entirely like me. I feel like I’m missing out, like I’m not quite complete without my “usual” practice. Yet at the same time, I hate the thought that I’ve become accustomed to a routine, and that I can’t bear the thought of adjusting and changing to meet my body’s needs and circumstance. What has yoga taught me, after all these years, anyway? How embarrassing…
This evening I came to the conclusion that it means I need to strengthen my meditation practice. Typically, I go through phases. I’ll spend weeks focused on a meditation practice to complement my yoga practice — this typically happens after I’ve read something particularly inspiring, or when a friend / family member has invited me to explore a new type of meditation, or after I’ve taken a yoga/meditation/spirituality course or workshop. Typically, I stick with it for anywhere from 3-6 weeks and then slowly settle back into my yoga-focused practice, interspersed with some meditation here and there. I have a hard time keeping up with the pranayama and meditation side of things, but I know I need to be better at this.
So, this little sojourn away from all things left-armed is leaving me to think I should re-focus. I’m already running, even if I’m not really enjoying it… at least I’m doing it. So I have physical activity. And I’m stretching those hip abductors and hamstrings, so I’ll be okay. Maybe I should use this time to go inward a bit more. Hrmmmm…
I don’t like it — I don’t like that I’m being nudged into this rather than having chosen it. But hey, sometimes that’s the way the cookie crumbles — so I might as well embrace it. Right? (right?)
But I’m struggling. And that’s my truth today. Big sigh. I’m not good at going inward when the universe nudges me that way.
So if anyone has any helpful tips or suggestions for me — either yoga-for-runners poses sans le bras gauche or deepening meditation-invitation primers that I can tackle on my own — please let me know. I’m quite willing… I just need a bit of a push in my mind-shift.
Oh, and reading material on the either-or stuff would help too. I think it starts out psychological, y’know?
(here’s a 30-second clip of BKS Iyengar on why practice is so important…)
