Baby's Got The Bends(sssssssss)

I don’t like snakes or back bends. There I said it. But this is blog not fortune cookie so I’ll explain but since this is MY blog I’m not going to just tell you why I don’t like snakes or back bends. No no no I’m going to tell you a little story about my life and relate it to why I don’t like snakes or back bends…well no, I’m going to tell you a little story about why I should be doing back bends and becoming a snake hunter. Well not a snake hunter but… Maybe I should jut get on with it,no?

So here I am not liking snakes, not liking back bending, and house sitting. I’m house sitting for my doctor actually because I’m a dog person and I need a vacation but can’t afford one. So my Doc and his wife asked me if I’d stay at the house taking care of their beautiful, aging dog Emma and you know, other things like checking the pool chemicals and watering the plants and walking through the acres of gorgeous land they have and sweating out my depression in the sauna. Its hard work, no it’s not, in fact I think part of the reason they asked me is because they know I’ve had a really rough month and a half and needed a break. So the other day I was walking down the stone steps do my daily pool routine, the house is built on a hill with beautiful rough boulders forming “walls” to keep the earth back and cut in a place for a patio and a pool. As I rounded the corner of the steps along the wall I saw this:

That’s about 2 feet of shed snakes skin! My first reaction was a pulse of fear because where there is snake skin there was an actual snake. Of course there was a snake it’s a rock wall, cool underneath, not to mention full of chipmunks and mice and other critters snakes snack upon, and warm on the top perfect for warming up that cold blood in the hot sun. *shutter* Once that moment passed my next thought was, “Cool! Snake skin!” because yes, my inner child is part 12 year old boy. And really once that initial shock goes away you can appreciate the amazing transformation that snakes go through. They shed their skin, and yes we humans are constantly shedding skin cells, our tissue renewing itself over and over again. But snakes do it way better. They grow out if it, they slough off the pieces of themselves that no longer serve them without becoming something all together different. That’s still Joe the snake lingering (ever so creepily) under the rock wall, just a little longer (*shutter again*) and more comfortable. So after my shock and young boyish curiosity I thought to myself how I really needed to work on my back bending. And I did…not. So the universe or mother nature or whatever got a little more insistent. The next day I walked down the stone steps and rounded a corner there was an actual snake. Luckily I was going kind of fast so my momentum wouldn’t let me stop even though I made a strange sort of strangled gasping yelp sound and nearly took a header.

I did my pool routine and then turned to look up the stairs for Mr. Snake Guy. I crept oh so slowly back up to the spot where he was sun bathing and he was still there. Full Diclousure: it was not the snake that had shed it’s big old skin, it was a common Garder Snake like this one:

I know they are not poisonous! I’ve always known that, just like I known that there is only like 2 poisonous snakes species that even live in Wisconsin. I still stood there rooted to the spot asking, out loud mind you, that Mr. Snake Guy please crawl back under the rocks so I could go back up the stairs. Yes, the other part of my inner child is an 8 year old girl. I’ve dealt with it and I still don’t like snakes. Nor back bends.

I don’t like back bends because they are uncomfortable. I’m pretty long in the torso for someone kind of short, and my thoracic vertebrae have very ling spinal processes: (that’s the part that sticks out like a droopy finger in the side view:

So back bending doesn’t come naturally to me, it hardly comes at all. Over the years I’ve been able to get into full wheel and a deep camel pose but I just don’t like how I feel in them. And now because I have all this bad stuff I’m trying to recover from over the past 6 weeks I don’t like the way they feel even more. Because the thing about deep back bends is that they open the front line of the body, they expose your heart and all I want to do is protect mine. I want to keep my heart safe while it heals from a painful breakup, a painful move, and the most painful of them all, closing my studio (that’s another blog all together!). So I don’t want my heart open at all, I’m exhausted and scared, just like I felt asking that harmless garder snake to go hide to I could go back to the house. 

I took a step forward tired of begging the snake to move and he flicked his little snaky tongue at me. Smelling, I don’t know utter shame and embarrassment, he decided he wanted nothing to do with me and went back in the rocks. I went to the house. Maybe it was the adrenaline for the encounter but I was a little restless, so I did down dog for a few breathes, then I shifted forward into plank and lowered down through chaturanga. I held there not wanting to come all the way up into up dog. So dropped to my belly inched my hands forward to my shoulders and began to straighten my arms, pausing to activate my legs and pelvic loop and I gingerly made it into cobra. A few breathes in cobra feeling my body lengthen and my neck grow tall then I took a breath out and let my head fall back and there I found the light.

Ok granted it was the light from the sky light because it was sunny out, but it was lovely. I closed my eyes and let the light turn the insides of my eyes pink and green before pushing back into child's pose. I gave a quick gratitude for the light and the sensation and then got up and went about my day. It was lovely little moment and now I love back bends and snakes…NOT. I still don’t like either of them but it was a reminder that just because some things scare us or make us feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean they aren't good for us.