Tim Miller in Charleston
It's been a while since I've written.. so the short summary is this - my practice has been pretty bad lately. My sacroliliac (SI) joint has been really bothering me and I have had a hard time with forward bending for about a month. About 2 weeks ago I finally I went to see a chiropractor. He took some Xrays and gave me two sessions of electro-stim and some really strong adjustments, and I feel like new! He found a couple of things out of whack that I could see on the Xrays and confirmed that I have a pretty minmal curve in my lumbar spine (kyphosis). My L5 /S1 joint is pretty compressed right now too and he recommended that I use a roll under my lower back when I sleep. This along with about 5 days off from my practice and my back feels great!
Yesterday I had the opportunity to take a workshop from Tim Miller in Charleston at Cathy Morse's new studio called The Practice Space . Tim was one of guruji's first western students and has been practicing for over 30 years. When I was in Mysore, Tim showed up at the very end of my stay. One morning, as I was getting near the end of my practice, I looked up to see who had put their mat down beside me, and lo and behold, it was Tim Miller. I had taken a pranayama workshop from him in Estes Park so I knew who he was, but I was pretty surpised to see him practicing right next to me in Mysore!
The workshop began with a short discussion by Tim followed by a Mysore style practice. My back felt pretty good yesterday, so I did not need to hold back in any of my poses and had the opportunity to get some good advice and adjustments from Tim. I told him about not being able to feel grounded in Marichyasana C and D and he suggested that I put a folded prop underneath my sitbones to create an anterior tilt in my pelvis. Even though I know this is what we typically do for correcting a posterior tilt I have been tentative about using propos in my Ashtanga practice and had never tried this in this pose. It did the trick and I was able to keep the length in my spine and avoid bowing out my lower back, which is what happens most of the time when I bind in the pose. Yay!
I am hoping this adjustment will help ease the sacroiliac pain that I have been having. He also told me that in general SI pain is from deep forward bending without a lot of support i.e. back strength...and his suggestion, much to my dismay, was to do lots of backbends. Great. This is what Lisa has been trying to get me to do for months but I have such an aversion to them that I usually do just through and rush through them as quickly as I can. I guess this will be my work for the next few months.
The good news is that Tim gave me a new poseI He helped me bind pretty tightly in Supta Kurmasana and when I asked if I should keep going he said he didn't see why not. I have been doing Garba Pindasana in Lisa's led classes so I was able to get into it without much trouble and then Tim helpded me balance into Kukutasana. I have been working on Supta Kurmasana since getting back from India, and perhaps holding back too much about moving forward, but I guess at this point I have no excuse. The poses which come next in the primary series are all pretty accessible, so I think my next big challenge will be standing backbends. I think my goal will be to get them by the end of the summer.
After a lunch break Tim gave a talk on the Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. He started with book 1, reciting the sutras and asking the students to repeat the Sanskrit. Over the course of the next three hours he worked through about 10 sutras in Book 1, skipped Book 2 and then hit a few highlights - or "greatest hits" as he called them - from books 3 and 4. The talk was interesting, though I did recognize some of the stories from the Pranayama talk he gave in Estes Park at the YJ conference last September. After attending the workshop I feel like my practice has been re-invigorated and I am inspired to get back into my habit of reading the Sutras on a daily basis.
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