As I have mentioned a few times, the last three years has seen a renewed focus on our health by both my dear wife, Sue, and myself. We quit smoking and started running. I wanted to clear my lungs out if possible and get my cardiovascular system back to something close to healthy. A couple of months ago we added in Wii Fit to our routine, if for no other reason than to change things up. This had the affect of introducing Yoga to me and I have now done a 30 minute routine daily for the past 45 days or so. It has been fun and I'll admit that with my Wii-Age hovering around 33 (and hitting as low as 25), it has been a bit of an ego boost but I had the impression that there was no real value to this Yoga business beyond that. Today I found out otherwise.
Again, as I've mentioned before, my wife is a talented Tattoo Artist and I am her blank canvas...every Wednesday I line up for another session as we try to complete my leg sleeve. Tattoo guns are fairly simple devices, there are two "engines" but both do the same thing, mechanically move a needle (or more often a group of needles) up and down a shaft that contains a reservoir of ink. The needle has ink clinging to it as it goes through the reservoir and then pushes the ink into the skin on the down stroke. So, unlike (say) a marker, pencil, or indeed even most pens these days, orientation is important. That shaft needs to be at about a 45-degree angle to the skin and must be pointing down to some degree. This means that the canvas must move to accommodate the Artist which is not much of an issue for the front and backside of our bodies but can force some very interesting poses when dealing with a side of a body.
There are two Yoga poses that really hurt when I first started doing them, the Spinal Twist and the Shoulder Stand; both seemed to stretch my body in a way that I was pretty sure my body was not meant to stretch. The Shoulder Stand is where you lie on your back and throw your feet over your head, touch the floor and then rise them up to a vertical while supporting your back with your arms. I honestly thought it was impossible for me to touch my feet on the floor, but this week I started doing it (which makes me believe it is possible for me to do the splits as well!)
The spinal twist is where you lie on your back and pull your knee to the floor while keeping the opposite shoulder on the floor twisting of your body like a corkscrew; after a while you switch knees and shoulders. This one I am a long way from nailing, I can't put both knee and shoulder down simultaneously and I think I'm 8 inches away. However, today I had a tattoo on the side of my leg and needed to twist my body on my side in a way that both worked for Sue and the camera. Previous attempts at such maneuvers led to hours of pain but today was a breeze. Twisted up like a pretzel, lying still for better than an hour and when she was done I was not. It was Yoga that I have to thank for that and it's only been 45 days; I wonder what a year will bring.