The Other Side

Over the course of my hermitage amongst the strip malls, restaurants, coffee shops, and yoga studios of the suburbs of Boston (which is coming to a close!), much new shit has come to light. You could call it a convalescence of sorts, set off like one of those weird re-usable hot/cold packs by the little metal clicker of my imminent departure.

For example, I'm picking a bunch of dirty plates off of a table of oh-so-delightful guests, who decide the best time to chat me up is just after I've loaded up with about thirty pounds of plateware which is beginning to deposit sauce down my shirtfront as the melting ice cream floods ceramic reservoirs. Normally I would not allow myself to be caught in such a compromising position, but it was Mother's Day, busiest restaurant day of the year. I was well into my eleventh hour of the ol' non-stop non-stop, and I was too shell-shocked to tell more hungry people--the stupidest people in the world and no, neither you nor I are an exception--what they were going to eat, when they were going to get it, and how, exactly, I would give it to them, thank you very much and control your children.

So as they're talking to me, I get to do a little exploration of my gradually fatiguing bicep. Muscle groups operate, generally, in opposition to another. Biceps/triceps are a nice, simple example. By actively extending the triceps while the biceps were loaded, shifting my elbows ever so slightly forward in relation to the ribcage, I radically altered the effort of the biceps. I felt my abdominals engage and my weight shifted slightly back, which I compensated for by extending my hamstrings through the heel and lifting the quadriceps a bit. Now, instead of a slouched, isolated effort of a single muscle group--what happens when you lift weights with sloppy form--I was in a position which activated the entire body. No pose is complete without awareness through all meridians, and its effort like this which lets you feel how altering weight through your feet, or relaxing the butt, or bending the knees can change how your upper body bears weight.

Convalescence, right? Of... employment with, yogic principles, and...

It was just one of those moments.