On All Sides, Baby

We workshopped it here in Richmond this weekend. It was our first Anusara workshop at the studio where I work and so I was quite honored that many students who take my class were able to come out for Lila and Mark. It was quite remarkable, actually.

I am always interested to reflect on my take away from workshops. Sometimes I come away deeply invigorated to change my life, other times I'm infused with Grace, and still others I'm blown away by new or different technical information. This weekend was one of those last ones. She worked us HARD and deep and gave us LOTS to think about.

One of my biggest take-aways from the weekend has to be about Muscular Energy in the legs. I know, how boring, Muscular Energy. I do it in every practice, seriously! But I realized I wasn't exactly engaging in a balanced way.

Muscular Energy, as you may remember, is the current that is so attracted to your internal state that it draws everything back in on itself. One of the components of ME is: hugging the skin to the muscle to the bone in a balanced way. And that was my take away... the hugging in has to happen ON ALL SIDES... EVENLY. It's like I'd completely forgotten that part of the equation. Instead I'd been gripping my quads and under using my hamstrings. That led me to overwork in my front legs while over stretching my hamstring attachments and causing pain. Yikes!

Lila had us isometrically pull our heels back in many many poses to get us to awaken our hamstrings. That was the trick for me. Super simple and easy but a it created a feeling of balanced equal embrace on all sides of my legs, and all the way up to the very attachment of the muscle.

Amusing and amazing that this practice continues in a process of forgetting and remembering and relearning and mastery time and time again. At any rate, I think the backs of my legs and my quads are really going to thank me for this work!