Yoga - respect your body?!

You know how people (yoga teachers, bloggers, writers) are always saying things like 'respect your body' - 'it's not how bendy you are' etc etc etc?!! Well, I have to say I don't think I've reached those exalted, detached heights at all!!

After a horrendous few weeks of illness, caring for other people who are sick, culminating in virtually no yoga for the past couple of weeks and then damaging my back helping support someone (without thinking about what I was doing!) - I find myself unable to go further than my knees in uttanasana (standing forward bend), and hardly able to get to the floor to do downdog, etc etc. And I HATE it!! Last Tuesday I started to do a first yoga practice in what seemed like living memory (! OK, exaggeration, but ... !) and found one of my wrists giving way in downdog and I collapsed on the floor!

Saw my osteopath on Thursday and she did say I should attempt to do some yoga - just not to do anything that hurt me! So today I went to a friend's to do yoga together. And - well the only good thing about it was the actual fact of having attempted to do some yoga again! There was so much I couldn't do at all, or could only do in an extremely limited fashion!

Just have to hope and pray that my 2nd visit to the osteopath tomorrow morning will get my back onto the road to recovery! Since I've been back from NSW and back at work (Thursday) I've been parking my car completely illegally in the carpark of the Uni vet school clinic that is right next door to the building where I'm working at the moment. Couldn't imagine being able to do the 15 minute walk up from my normal (legal) carpark, and decided if I got a fine I'd just pay it. Luckily I didn't so far - I'm now wondering if I'll have to continue doing this next week ... sigh!

Transit of Venus - pictures

Here's a couple of pictures taken from the ustream feed on the day ... :)



The pinky sun is using a "Calcium K" filter, which shows structures on the solar surface.
(Love this picture!!)



This close-up shot is a "white light" image.

The Transit of Venus - viewed!

So thrilled - I didn't think I was going to manage it (with work, hospital, doctor's appointment etc) but I did! I actually found myself looking through a workmate's telescope and watching the transit of Venus across the sun for 15-20 minutes! (off and on!)

I'd been at hospital all morning having the final Mabthera treatment. And then I was supposed to see the doctor but wires had got crossed and he'd gone off to do something elsewhere. I had the option of waiting for at least an hour, or else coming back in around 3 hours. So glad I decided to leave and come back. When I got to work someone told me that one of my colleagues (in IT) had brought in a telescope. He has a PhD in astronomy and I knew that over the past few days he'd been helping set up telescopes for people to see the Transit of Venus at the University where we both work. Not to mention various esoteric computer-related links!

So I went straight upstairs to his office, and the next thing I knew a small procession of us were following him out to an outside walkway where he set the telescope up and we could all peer through and see it - such a thrilling sight ... I think he'd been doing this all day! It was near the end - Venus was getting close to the edge of the sun, and was going to be over clear sky again around 3.30pm. So if I'd waited to see the doctor I would definitely have missed it ...

Sometimes timing just works!