Waking up
In the middle of August, I had emergency open heart surgery due to a previously undiagnosed infection. This infection caused several strokes. I was extremely fortunate as I was saved by some brilliant doctors, the love of my extended family, and a lot of prayers and healing energy. I was in the hospital for 3 weeks, in a rehab facility for 2 weeks and am now at home still working on recovering my language and yoga abilities.
I am physically writing this on January 1, but planned to write this blog post in November but was not able to figure out how to write it until now, so it is somewhat dated, but I was compelled to share with you the story of how it felt to begin to come back to myself in one aspect.
With so many weeks of mostly lying or sitting, my body had forgotten how to move. I was so fortunate that my home care physical therapist was also a yoga teacher, so he could relate to my usual way of being. I have had so many insights, which I will ultimately share here, but today I wanted to tell you about the day that he returned me back to yoga. We had worked through walking and strength for a few weeks and I was having a discouraging moment, after 2 weeks of eye issues and migraines, and he said, “it’s time to open up the body with some stretching.”
He began to describe a series of basic postures that I was so familiar with but had forgotten. Since that remembering, I have done yoga every morning. Since the initial series, we added other postures, and have added some of my favorites, but every day I do at least the original postures to start the day. I decided I would do each posture for 5 breaths so that I could get the series done in 20 minutes. The shortness of the original series enables me to do it every day, and if i have more time in a day, I add.
I thought you too might like to do this series every day and see what it wakes up in you.
This blog assumes that you are familiar with these postures and in no way is it intended to be instructional.
Lie down and stretch the body lengthwise
Draw into ardha pavana muktasana, one leg and then the other
One knee bent, foot on the floor and the other leg lowering and raising.
10 breaths of pelvic tilt
Knee flops
Figure 4
Tie stretches with straight leg
Sit in chair:
Seated cat and dog
Seated twist
Side stretches
Neck stretches
Stand up
Gentle warrior 1
Warrior 2
Goddess
Star
Stand with one hand on belly on one on heart. .
Copyright 2024 Nancy C Murray
