Kate Taylor's Yoga Site

When I woke up Wednesday morning my lower back was not feeling great, but not much worse than other mornings. I went to practice and warmed up to the forward bends pretty slowly but eventually got into a rhythm where I was consciously trying to protect my back but really get into all of the poses. 

For the first time ever I was able to put my head on the floor in prasarita padottanasa – which is a wide leg forward fold.  Yay! Good for me!  The trick was to really engage mula bandha and allow that to give me the lift and bend at the hip creases. I have also heard that good use of the bandhas will help protect the back, so I thought that I must be doing all kinds of good for my back. Wrong. As the practice persisted my back got more and more sore and I let my pride push me through the rest of the practice with lots of power and deep forward folds. I even bound on the right side in Marichi D all by myself – again - another first.  Even more pride welled up inside me when Saraswati noticed from across the room and told me “Very Good.”

As the end of my practice approached I was moving more and more slowly. When I tried to stand up after Savasana I could barely straighten up and walk back to the dressing area. My sacrum and tail-bone were consumed with a dull ache.  I went home and lay down on the floor and practiced legs up the wall pose, which is supposed to ease pain in the sacrum and bring lots of good circulation into the area. After a couple of Advil and some toast for breakfast I was able to take a bucket bath and do some laundry, but I was walking around like an old lady.  I could not tell if the pain was coming from overstretched hamstrings (and maybe piriformis ?), which were putting a strain on my back, or if I had somehow hurt my back.

I decided to try and book a massage before I went to the Ayurvedic consultation I had booked for 10:00 am. Kumar, the person everyone here recommends, told me he was booked until the following Monday. I asked him what I might do in the meantime. He told me that 100% of the pain he treats is caused by emotions and that I should review the events leading up to the start of my pain and see if I could recall something that might be causing it. Had I talked to my husband? How did that make me feel? Had I recalled a bad childhood memory? Etc. etc. Ummm…I could not think of anything specific that would have triggered this but promised to do some thinking before I came back on Monday. Should be an interesting massage.