I went to my one hour power yoga class to sweat, stretch my muscles and move fresh oxygen through my blood. I hadn’t taken a class in nearly a week and my body desperately craved the heat and movement of flow.
After an amazingly intense one hour class our instructor had us lie on to our backs and get into “happy baby” for our final resting pose.
Looks like this:
At first this pose feels wonderful, your vertebrae, one by one, aligns to the floor, hips begin to stretch open and relax and you feel and actually look like a happy baby.
But holding this posture for more than 30 seconds begins to feel torturesque and we were in this pose for nearly six or seven minutes…
not certain exactly but enough time to listen to the entire song of Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah ..
Between this extremely deep hip opener and mesmerizing song filling the yoga studio… my mind began to wander and I became lost in my thoughts.
Thoughts of pregnant women and how open and relaxed their hips would be in this very pose, if I would take yoga classes when I was finally pregnant one day, my own happy baby that I continue to dream about both day and night, bringing me back to the reality that my cycle still had not started since my surgery, the heavy thought of trying again…and the pain in my tight hips which began intensifying with my thoughts.. and before I knew it my hips began fighting the pose and the pain almost became unbearable taking my breath away…I wanted to quit, I wanted to run right out of the room-Hallelujah and all, away from the heat and the sweat and my thoughts…
But I stayed.
And I breathed.
Welcoming both the pain and the release.
And that’s when it started
Tears began to roll down my flushed cheeks
and I let them
I knew where they were coming from and it made me cry that much more; my hips were holding on to
my tightness, rigidness, controlling tendencies, worries and fears
and I just told myself to let go
Let it all go- she whispered…
And I did
And it felt wonderful
Deciding at that very moment that both tears and happy baby are a beautiful thing
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(Ananda Balasana)
(aka Dead Bug Pose)
Benefits:
Physical: Releases lower back and sacrum; opens hips, inner thighs, and groins
Emotional: Releases unconscious emotions stored in the hip area
Rx for: Lower Back Pain
1. Lie flat on your back with knees bent, feet flat on the floor about hip-width apart, arms alongside the body, palms facing the ceiling.
2. Lift feet off the floor and bring knees in toward the shoulders.
3. Flex the feet.
4. Grasp the outsides of the feet with each hand.
5. Pull gently using the hands, enhancing the stretch and bringing knees closer to the floor.
6. Press buttocks into the floor.
7. Hold for 5 to 10 slow, deep breaths.
ksirahsirah 