Finally locked that damn knee!

Have been sick since my last trip back from Asia. Still managed to go on and off to the hot room as the Kaiser advice nurse told me "you are doing all the right things. electrolyes, rest.. you still have a lot of phlegm and mucous. so put on a humidifier.".. I knew which humidifier was going to be used over the weekend. 

Went to the hot room and stayed put. It did bring out a lot of the mucous. Also felt better by Sunday evening. Did a full days work today and was happy that there was no sudden urge to go curl up into a fetal position and sleep. Being tired physically and mentally doesn't help.

This evening I show up for a class by Mr. Fire, who gives me the most grief in any class, knowing I love him for it. 

Did my best locking of the knee and he picked on me right away. Then he starts giving me readings from his lockometer on the podium.. it is 99.5% , 99.8%.. 

I thought it was at 110% going to 120% and was honestly disappointed to know it was still at 99 something %. Pushed my knee back and was just about to fall forwards as usual, when the teacher looked elsewhere at another student and said "look at your own eyes" and for some strange reason I looked up to see my eyes in the mirror instead of my knee that was 99.8% and like magic, didn't fall forward.

You see, my biggest problem (my perception, not my teachers evaluation) is that I am bow legged. That means, when I do lock that knee (okay it has been only once..) or get close to it, my feet, knees and waist will NOT be on one straight line, like other folks. Maybe, eventually yoga changes bone structure and one can come out of bow leggedness, but that eventually doesnt seem like tomorrow for me.. So I always grappled with this "counter weight" concept.

If you push your knees back and they stick out on the line made by your butt and feet, you have to have a counter weight to balance that when kicking forward.. The minute I lean forward, it is game over. 

Thanks to hearing "look up" I pushed my back, up and towards the back wall ceiling and there was the "counter" to the forward force. 

It takes years to figure out something. Hopefully this gives me a starting point to get from step 1 to step 2 on this pose. 

It is heartening because 99.8% is an F for this pose. There is only two grades on this pose for part 1.

100% locked knee = D, anything less is F! 

Those five seconds were priceless! Will try to repeat this tomorrow and if sucessful  post a video of what I used to do before and what changed. 

Who knows, there may be many of my brothers and sisters out there with bow legs who might take something from my experience!

Dialogues with Yoga teachers

We have a new teacher at BYSJ who can only be described as "cross between a fire breathing dragon and a horse whisperer!"

In my third or fourth class with him, he jumps down from the teachers podium all concerned and in a flash he is standing next to me.

Fire breathing horse whispering dragon (lets abbeviate to Fire for short) : "Boss, something wrong with you?"

Me: blank stare that suggests "why would something be wrong with me? I am in the freaking first row busting my ass giving it a 110%" but I am unable to open my mouth and say anything because of the surprise factor.

Fire : "do you have a back injury or hip injury or something?"

Me : worried look on my face and thinking "do I have a back or hip injury that I am not aware of? maybe he knows something I don't.. these yoga teachers always seem to know more about my body and mind than I do myself" .. then I mutter a feeble "No"

Fire : Then why are you not kicking your leg out? I see you are never kicking your leg out. (His drill sergeant tone actually suggested "why the hell are you not kicking your leg out? what is wrong with you boy?") 

Me : (my head was going.. now come on.. "never" is a strong statement. you are saying never based on just one week of observation.. again all this is in my head) and I say out loud  "That is because I am not sure if I am locking my leg!

Fire : How long have you been standing like this?

Me : little over 4 years.

I was thinking the dude was actually going to be proud of me, for staying in stage 1 of standing head to knee pose for four years, patiently trying to lock my legs for all of 60 seconds, before graduating to stage 2. The next stage was to kick the leg out. After all, this is a life long practice and some folks apparently take months or years to lock their leg! Turns out, I was off on that logic, by a wide margin.

Fire : Your legs seem locked enough for me! Try it. I am going to stand here till you kick it forward a little bit. 

So he stayed next to me, literally pushed my hip to one side and pushed my knees back and breathed fire, till I kicked forward. 

Then he tells the class "If you keep doing the same thing to the same extent every day and come back and say, nothing is improving, you are not being fair to yourselves and the yoga. You have to take a chance and try the next step every now and then"

He brought out the bad bengal tiger in me.. I started getting flashbacks. 

There is a back story to my love hate relationship with this pose. There was a time, when I actually managed to do this pose.. nine months after starting to do Bikram Yoga. 

Guess I spoke too soon, while writing that post!  

In early 2012, every time I would kick out, my teachers would look at me and go "lock the knee.. your knee is not locked yet".. and they would all say it with concern in their voice like a parent tells a kid "dont touch the stove"! 

Somewhere, I became so unsure of my knee's "lockedness", if there is such a word, that I stopped at stage 1. It was okay in my head. After all, I was perfecting standing on one leg and distributing the weight evenly on one foot. It came in handy to occupy the kids and their friends in "who can stand on one foot the longest without bending the knee" contests. (note the profound lack of the word "locked"!)

It would be nice to have a lockometer strapped to the knee, that rings a bell and goes "Locking confirmed. Please proceed to stage 2"! Maybe I should come up with such a meter, because there is always the question in my head of "how locked is locked?" and Fire is not going to be there in every class for a confirmation.

The last few days have seen me go from stage 1 to stage 1 1/2 with some consistency. At this rate, I might even get to stage 2 and beyond very soon! 

At the end of the day, he was right. Every now and then the T-rex in me should test the fences. Who knows what might happen?

Worse case, you get a sequel to  "standing head to knee" post!

A side note: It is great to see teachers walk around and fix poses during the class.

In one class, Fire handed the microphone to another teacher in the room and was walking around fixing everyones pose. It was surreal to have that kind of attention in a class.

It is also funny, when a teacher comes to you and says "can I adjust your pose?" It is like they are asking permission to touch you, be it male or female teacher, asking a male or female student. See it happen so many times in class and I really don't get it.  

This is a physical class. It is like your doctor or physiotherapist asking for permission to touch you, before doing a treatment! If the teacher is not going to adjust your pose, who do you expect to adjust it? Shaquille O'Neil?

2012 - A great start !!!

It is no secret that the biggest change in this household is that Daddy is now doing okay when it comes to being healthy!

When my MIL and myself started doing Yoga we set ourselves many personal goals. My personal challenge was to do the standing head to knee pose before March 10th, exactly within a year after starting yoga. Teachers told me that some folks take two or three years to do this and some who are strong and flexible to start with, can pull it off a few weeks or months after starting Yoga.

We had an emotional farewell class to the old yoga studio at BYSJ yesterday evening. It was an event we will not forget! 70 people came to celebrate the closing of the old studio which enables starting 2012 in a huge new studio right next door! It was an emotional farewell as this place is a temple of sorts, where people make their dreams come true and push themselves to bring out the best in them. Michelle, the owner of BYSJ was the one teaching the class and she coaxed, cajoled and blackmailed in her sweet voice, the 70 people in that class, to do every pose without sitting down. She even managed to tell us old stories of the creation of this studio during the breathing breaks! Somehow in the middle of all this, managed to do the pose that has been eluding me all this time..and once you know how to do it once, voila, you can do it again for a photo session in your backyard!

2012 is indeed being ushered in with a sense of accomplishment!

While showing the kids the pose they also wanted me to show them the other two standing poses as the little one clicked the snaps! Seriously, she is turning into one fine photographer..

The best gift to oneself is a sound body and a sound mind. The family is now convinced about the sound body part. They have not yet confirmed the sound mind part. In fact they think Daddy Narayanan is seriously getting unsound. More on that later..

For now, this is a happy blogger and a happy blog!

.