Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way sometimes. In my case, the arrival of spring meant the arrival of racing season. As a competitive runner and triathlete, my attention turned to training at the track, on the trail, in the pool and lake, and on the bike. My yoga practice never faltered — there hasn't been a day since I started my yoga journey that I did not practice yoga in some form — and I of course continued to teach my yoga classes, but my blogging practice certainly took a nose dive. I'm sure everyone who took the time to read this blog thought I was gone for good.
But just as life sometimes throws obstacles in our path, it also offers surprises. My return to this yoga blog can be considered one of these! I would love to say that I will blog faithfully each week from hereon in, but I also know that I simply cannot predict what life will bring. I will, however, make a conscious effort to post here as regularly as I can.
That being said, Splitsville also refers to one of my chief focuses of 2014: achieving Hanumansana, or full side splits. As flexible as I may be, I had never been able to do a split. Let me amend that: I was able to do a full slide split once, when I was nine months pregnant with my son Jaeson (aka Young Yogi on Instagram) and had his added weight to help drive my pelvis downward. Other than that one occasion, doing the splits was a pipe dream.
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| My Hanumanasana attempt for the June 2014 challenge. |
In June 2014, I participated in a yoga challenge on Instagram. For the month's final post, one of the hosts, Nick, instructed us to post our impossible pose: the asana that we could only dream of achieving. It took me a nanosecond to realize that, for me, this was Hanumanasana. I posted my best attempt at this posture, as sad as it might be. At the end of the day, Nick further challenged us to continue working on our impossible pose and to post a progress photo at the end of July. The heat was now on, since I sometimes cannot back down from a challenge. Thank heavens we don't live in the age of thrown gauntlets.
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| My split at the end of July (top) and August (bottom). |
Every single day in July, I faithfully practiced Hanumanasana. Oftentimes I thought my efforts were futile. I didn't see how on earth I was going to ever get myself any closer to the ground than I already was — which was hovering about a foot off the floor. Still, I refused to give up (I'm stubborn like that). At the end of July, I posted a follow-up photo: the top photo in this collage (I'm wearing black). I was amazed to discover that I had indeed made progress! No, I was nowhere near a full split, but at least now I was an inch or so closer to the ground. I continued my daily practice for another month and, at the end of August, I was hovering just inches off the ground (bottom photo in the collage).
I unfortunately suffered a huge setback in August: I severely pulled my left hamstring in a 5K swim race. Weeks of physical therapy ensued, which helped somewhat, but I could not escape that strained, pulling feeling at the back of my left thigh when I practiced Hanumanasana. From my running and triathlon networks, I knew full well that a hamstring injury could not only be painful but career ending. I had too much invested in upcoming races to risk further injurying that muscle. I cut back drastically on my workouts. I completely eliminated biking from my training regimen as well as swimming, since that is how I injured myself in the first place, although I did swim, bike, and run in the season's last triathlon (in which I won my age division and placed 5th overall... go figure). As for Hanumanasana, I no longer practiced it daily, and I knew — I KNEW — that I was losing the ground I'd worked so hard to gain.
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| Holding pattern: my split in October, still hovering by inches. |
In late October, at my follow-up with my sports medicine specialist/orthopedist, he asked how I was doing with the injury. I told him the truth: that I didn't feel it was healing well, despite the therapist's note that I had regained some strength and range of motion. He asked me what made the hamstring hurt. I replied by dropping into Hanumanasana. The look on his face was priceless! He went on to comment that 95 percent of his patients don't drop into splits or run marathons yet continue to complain about their hamstrings. He set a follow-up appointment for December and told me to continue with the home exercises the therapist had given me.
Still concerned about sidelining myself completely by pushing the hamstring, I still avoided biking and swimming and just ran gentle 5K and 10K distances to keep myself fit. I focused more on my arm balances and inversions, practicing Hanumanasana perhaps once a week. To my surprise, the effort I was putting into my leg positions in other poses was actually helping me with Hanumanasana. Not only had I maintained what flexibility I had achieved, I was now in full contact with the floor with my left leg!
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| 01/24/15: As far as I've gone in Hanumanasana. |
It's late January now and, yes, I am still in therapy for that pulled hamstring. I have started swimming and biking again, since my new therapist explained that strengthening the injured leg would help with the healing process. My expectations for Hanumanasana have been modified, however, thanks to a series of MRIs that reminded me not only that I have a bone tumor in my right hip but that the hip is shifted downward and outward, preventing a full split alignment, and that there are definite signs of osteoarthritis and labral degeneration. There isn't much I can do about the turned-out hip or the tumor, but I am not going to let arthritis and muscle degeneration hamper me... too much! My focus is now on gently stretching and extending the right leg -- my back leg -- while in Hanumanasana. I may never be able to get both legs fully down, but I can do the best I can with what I have. And given that, for all intents and purposes, I've achieved something I thought was impossible a half year ago, I can only just start to imagine what else I am capable of achieving if I set my mind to it and work towards that goal.
