There is this shadow economy of bodyworkers ashtangis tend to use to fix the pains and misalignments we create in ourselves with practice. I do love to be touched and pretty much think of bodywork as the best entertainment that exists. No amount of adjusting, manipulation, palpation or deep pressure is too much provided the provider is in the 30% of humans who are intelligent with that stuff. (Yeah make your wisecracks—what are you, one of the people who don't like to be touched? That's another topic for another day.)
Being without bodywork resources for a good while and yet more sensitive than ever to the “ailments” that rolfing, acupuncture or garden variety massage would “fix,” I’ve been thinking about self-reliance and closing the loop of practice.
Recursiveness?
Which brings me to my T-8. One of the toughest vertebra to move, and mine is itchy to sublax left. This is ever since my sacrum shifted twelve months and a day ago. There’s a slight leftward rotation in the holy bone, and a way this triggers the Q-L and some erector spinae, and lets the T-8 slide at the most sensitive times.
Then it stays out for like three weeks while the standing poses rather inefficiently coax it back in.
Unless! Unless I’ve discovered I practice the standing postures COLD. Anything where the hips are square and the spine rotates is a candidate: paivritta triko, paivritta parsvo, arda matsy are the best I have found. Check it out.
I've been taking paiv-parsvo cold at the oddest times lately, keeping the T-8 in its place. Very exciting to find I can, to a degree, be my own chiropractor on this one.
I prefer having it done for me. But like the ideal and the availability of doing it myself.
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