This last week we learnt about the skeletal structure of our bodies. It was really interesting to find out more things about your body that you never knew about before, especially when you have already been poked at and prodded a lot by medical practitioners. Of course, the inner kaypoh in me was also really excited to look at and examine other people’s body, but it’s a little creepy to say that out loud.
As part of my lupus treatment, I had medication that could lead to bone loss, so I had bone scans once a year for 10 years until we were sure that side effects were unlikely. I thought I have rather healthy bones since no one had pointed out any issues before – I knew that I didn’t have skeletal scoliosis and that my bone density is higher than normal.
I didn’t, however, know that I have lordosis, kyphosis, or that there was even a name for uneven muscles on both sides of the body. I used to laugh about being lopsided – it was a lot more obvious when I was playing basketball and my two arms look like they belong to different people; when you do hundreds of thousands of lay-ups with the same leg and same arm, it takes a lot of discipline to train the other half of the body – discipline I didn’t have.
It’s also fun realising what activities could have led to the issues – I don’t dance, but I think the lordosis could have been from years of martial arts and being stepped on by the instructors. The kyphosis from bad habits – hunching over the computer and locking my knees; honestly I didn’t know any other way of standing other than locking my knees; it was somewhat amusing to realise that other people actually microbend their legs naturally. It was also amazing to know that yoga could help correct some of these issues that we have – and how we could tailor our practice to target our issues.
A classmate was feeling sad about her body, but the way I see it, yes they are issues that we have to work on, but they are also our battle scars. The human body is such an amazing thing; each of us have such a different body but yet capable of supporting us in its own way. Some of us have worse problems that they were born with, rather than molded by years of mistreating our body, but at the end of it, here we all are, attending the same YTT course and having a full life. Despite all the problems we have, I think we should all be proud of our bodies – it’s helped us to make it as far as we have and now we know how to treat it well to help us go further.
Joan