Sir Galahad (Extreme Version)

Ouch!
Originally uploaded by Rozanne.

I just did this exercise for 60 seconds on each side, and now my hip flexors are generating enough thermal energy to heat the state of Rhode Island for a year. If you’ve ever done this stretching exercise, say, in a yoga class, you’ll know that it’s feckin’ excruciating. One yoga teacher posited that when you do this stretch you're accessing decades of trauma built up and stored in the hip flexors. Think about that! It's probably hooey, but the agony component of the stretch is so great I could almost buy into that idea. One good thing? My hip flexors feel noticeably better immediately afterward. There might even be a bit of an endorphin rush.

As a person who spends hour after hour sitting on her arse, my hip flexors are in a constant state of contraction. To make matters worse, when I’m not sitting, I’m walking or cycling—two forms of exercise that further contract and shorten the hip flexors.

And now I’m paying the price. There’s been something wonky and ominous going on with both of my hips for the past couple of months that cannot completely be explained by the nearly total slack-off in my yoga routine. It’s more serious than that. So I’ve issued myself a new directive: Do the Sir Galahad* (Extreme Version) twice a day without fail. I hope it helps. I also turned up some scary information about how chronically tight hip flexors can lead to arthritis. Yikes.

Other than obsessing about hip flexors, I’ve been feeling pretty great today. I feel pleased and light-hearted every time I think about the way the elections went. Yesterday I found myself diligently avoiding any situation in which I might hear early returns. In recent years, it’s just been too disheartening to listen to election-night returns. And this year, despite a prediction that Democrats would do well, I just had trouble believing it and didn’t want to get my hopes up. But—Yahoo, Mountain Dew!—things turned out so much better than I dared imagine (at least for a mid-term election). My faith is somewhat restored in the American people for (very belatedly) rejecting the Bush Administration’s heinous, murderous, profiteering agenda. I hope that the Democrats will now exhibit some backbone and get cracking on getting the country back on track—a monumental task.



See ya in Hell!

*While researching hip flexor exercises I discovered that the killer stretch is an extreme version of what the Kiwis call “The Sir Galahad.”

Today’s Random NaBloPoMo blog: Doahleigh – Holy Waste of Teabags!