Autocrackty · 2 April 2008

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.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: astanga yoga , having a body

Comment

1. Glad that you adjust yourself in practice. Have spent time with a self adjuster who was on the verge of turrets with her popping,twisting, lifting legs and other very distracting practices during dinner. Or lunch, or coffee.

   I have not been touched for over a year and a half. I am very particular myself. I even won a massage at last years yoga party, and I just couldn’t bring myself to go.

   Posted by: Susan · Apr 3, 06:42 AM · #

2. Constant, public self-adjustment: look at me! tactic. ANNOYING. Over dinner? Uhg. It almost says to your companion: “I just can’t get comfortable here with you; just a second while I put my foot behind my head to alter my experience.”

   I’ll stretch out my shoulders every few hours if I’m working in a cafe, but even that amount of making my body obvious would be unprofessional around the department. I wouldn’t even SIGH to release tension when I’m in the presence of the big boys.

   Bad bodywork is disturbing. I’ve had very little bodywork, and 90% of it has been amazing. I think I am particular, but have been lucky. (By my sample, the work is great in LA and shitty in MT—no surprise.) When I am pleased, that becomes hilariously obvious; and workers seem to respond to that as well.

   I’m suppose the expectation we bring to a session colors what the practitioner is able to do though. In a mysore room, similarly, maybe there is one person in 30 who will experience touch as bad no matter how it is done.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 3, 09:48 AM · #

3. it is a shame, Susan, because Marie is one of the most astute therapists i have ever been to! she does a mean shiatsu :)

   any ideas how to coax back a wayward L5?

   Posted by: cranky housefrau · Apr 3, 09:51 AM · #

4. Funny how one vertebra will get wayward, isn’t it?

   I wonder if there is a way to do this that won’t go in to your leg. Maybe go outside and get your long, flexible muscles a little chilly, then run in and hit ardha matsy or even pashasana.

   I’ve always thought it was a bit cruel to put pashasana right there at the beginning of first, after a truncated standing sequence. RF calls it the pose that “guards the second series” from those who should not be practicing it… because it’s so hard to execute under those circumstances.

   But this morning going in to it relatively cool I got a nice little crack in the lumbar, and realized how brilliant this posture, too, can be for aligning the spine. And again, it works early in the practice, whereas later the muscles might be so open that they would absorb any torque rather than transferring that to the bones.

   God I’m talkative today. Good thing I’ve installed leechblock....

   Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 3, 09:59 AM · #

5. p.s. For me the hips have to be even for any of this stuff to create alignment rather than dis-alignment.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 3, 10:01 AM · #

6. Hi (0v0)
   It would be nice to date a bodyworker.
   hugs,
   Arturo

   Posted by: arturo · Apr 3, 12:04 PM · #

7. Arturo, ask my husband how much bodywork he gets. i don’t have the energy for massage and sex, so he has to choose.

   Posted by: cranky housefrau · Apr 3, 02:33 PM · #

8. no happy endings, crankster? :)

   Posted by: cody · Apr 3, 03:01 PM · #

9. This 30% figure really intrigues me. I get the impression it’s partly experience and partly snatching a handy number out of the air. Do you really think such a large percentage of people are so capable at tactile expression/manipulation? I expect pretty much anyone could learn some sort of ‘gifted touch’ but is our culture not generally stultifying toward that?

   Cody, Tova has made it 100% clear that no happy endings are to take place on her massage table.

   Posted by: Carl · Apr 3, 03:28 PM · #

10. Cranky, don’t get cranky with me. As I said, I am very picky as to who I let touch me. I have to “feel” them out energetically. Sorry if that sounds very woo woo, but I need to have a connection of some sort. I know she’s your friend and she’s very lovely, but not someone I felt I could have massage me. It’s a very personal experience for me.

    Wooo woooo.

    And yes, I hate the self adjusts. And it’s so screaming LOOOOOK AAAATTT MEEEEE I AAAMMM AA YOOOGGGGIIII!

    Posted by: Susan · Apr 3, 03:51 PM · #

11. Oh hilarious, you two, with the happy endings.

    I am firmly in the both-and camp.

    I will probably get in trouble later for mentioning this.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 3, 05:27 PM · #

12. Carl, I want to belive—and do think it’s kind of true—that touching skillz are just like writing skillz or math skillz. You have to learn it, but some people will learn better than others. And some will take it to a higher level altogether.

    You’re right, and have been all along, that touching skills aren’t really taught in our world. And 30% is probably way too generous—it just happens to be the number that reflects my life, much of which is spend in ashtanga subculture and another portion of which moves (a little more secretly) among the weird ecstatic subtle energy experimenters of So-Cal. These people make up a kind of post-psychedelic body-consciousness movement, if you will. They are body-savants who highlight to me just how dead-on-their feet are the good book-smart people with whom I spend most my life.

    Book smarts still pay better, but touching smarts are something to behold and it’s pretty mind-blowing to find a community where the majority of people operate on a really high level of body consciousness.

    For the most part you won’t find these people here because they don’t really like to read and a lot of them aren’t even online.

    Kind of like the EZBoard. The proportion of people who want to write about asana is tiny in relation to the whole sum of practitioners out there. And probably the most skilled practitioners don’t even go there.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Apr 3, 05:45 PM · #

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