forearm plank: oh, how i love you

credit: David Martinez, Yoga JournalPhysical therapy is a strangely emotional experience for me.  I admit that I kind of crave the 50-minute core strengthening session.  So much so, clearly, that I showed up this morning, a week ahead of schedule, oopsies.  The good receptionist was kind enough to let me attend the class that was happening, and so I got the fix I needed.

It's a strange thing, as a serious yogi and an active person, to have been so inactive for most of this year, banned from most everything since surgery mid-May (a prohibition I violated to my own detriment, twice), and now outright forbidden from yoga by my foxy surgeon until September.  I need the stern utterly-clear Do Not from him, since my itch to move, my jones to get back on my mat is so strong, that I apparently haven't the sense of a goose.

Which is why finding myself on the funny fat blue mat in Physical Therapy makes me want to cry with happiness.  On all fours staring down at my fingerpads pressed into the mat, I feel a whooping sort of exhilaration just shy of giddiness.

And I am totally called out on my bad habits, the PT pointing it out immediately when I lose concentration, go for the flexibility and fall out of stability.

Mine is not an Achilles Heel, but an Achilles Belly, a weakness I thought I could work around, did work around, for years.  Until now.

The moves are super basic, but doing this with my lower belly contracted, supporting my low back in a way I scampered around til now, that part's hard.  And it's easy to get bored at home with this little practice, the motions so small, so far short of a dreamy handstand or a side-bakasana.

It was a different PT this morning than I'd had before, and a small class.  We went through the usual motions, and finally she said we were going to do a more advanced pose. I realized, listening to her instructions, that we were headed to forearm plank.  Crazy it may be, but oh, the utter joy that coursed through me!  And holding the pose, holding myself up with that pesky transversus adbominis, well, it was all I could do not to cry, feeling finally the full engagement of every muscle, the effort in the belly, stretching back through the heels, recalling all of the instruction I've ever received and bringing it all together.

Peggy does an (in)famous combination in her Sunday morning 10:15 class -- the class I've always referred to as Church, because it's packed to the rafters and it just has that glorifying feel -- this combination that would make Trixie and I groan, forearm plank, then shalabhasana, then forearm plank, then shalabhasana, lather rinse repeat, long holds, groaning, but feeling our own strength, and oh the triumphant rush of being done.  Today was the first time I felt that again, that feeling I've been missing so hard, with such a deep longing ache, since December of last year.

YES, so glad I get to now work forearm plank in my daily routine, as I work that low belly and get ready for my so-happy-can't-wait return to my yoga studio posse.

What a beautiful thing to have this body!  What a great feeling to know that right now I'm doing the work I most need to do to get back to what I love so much, and to be able to keep doing it til the day I die.  For that, I'll happily work the abdominals and work that forearm plank every day of the week.

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