CityGirlMoves,  Wellness

Cracking the coconut

I went to a lunch time class at Inner Space on Tuesday, and the teacher was one I had never had before named Heather. Heather is awesome and so was the class. The class focus was opening the heart, so lots of upper back bends to open the chest.

Back in the fall, I ended up with a minor rotator cuff injury. Very inconvenient for this girl, as that meant that I couldn’t do downward facing dog without my shoulder hurting. As some might know, downward dog (or if you want to get fancy, Adho Mukha Svanasana) is a huge part of most yoga classes. And I was going 3-4 times a week. My yoga mat is one of my happy places, so I’ve felt a bit out of sorts the last few months…

So, off to physio I went for three months and I resorted to actually using the gym in my work building. I’m not fond of the gym in general, but it’s a great place to do my physio exercises and the elliptical and I have become friends – sort of. Most of my Pilates stuff was okay for my shoulder, but I missed yoga.

I started going to class again back in February but I’ve kept it to once a week or practicing at home. But I feel like my shoulder is happy now, so I continue to do my physio reps for strength (Sam, my physio, would be very impressed with me) and I’ve started to go to class on a more regular basis. It’s been hard and very humbling because I’ve been taking more beginner classes to get back to basics and my body is accustomed to more advanced postures. But I don’t want to re-injure myself.

I can’t remember everything Heather talked about in class on Tuesday (there was talk of elephants and their symbolism in yoga and Indian culture, something I will have to research another day) but the thing that stuck out to me was her talking about the Hindu ritual of cracking a coconut as an offering at temple. The symbolism of cracking the coconut is the breaking of the ego. The message in that for me was reiterating that back to basics is a good thing and happy shoulder = happy me. Also, that I just needed to relax. As silly as it may sound, I did feel my heart open and when I walked out of there, I felt great. Coconut cracked.

Have you cracked a coconut lately?

Yoga Online posted this on Facebook the same day I went to lunch time yoga. So appropriate.

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