The psoas is an under-credited muscle that runs from the middle of the spine down the back and wraps around to attach at the top of the leg inside the thigh. It is part of the hip flexor family of muscles, and is one of the largest and strongest muscles in the body. While you may not spend much time dwelling on your psoas, you could take this moment to appreciate how it helps you stand up, bend forward, walk, and do all manner of neat things with your legs, torso, and pelvis. Heck, your probably using it right now.
The thing about the psoas that I find most interesting is that it is one of the primary muscles that engages by the fight or flight alarm. Some predator leaps out at you, all fangs and death, and the psoas leaps into action to help you react. This means that the psoas is one of the most likely muscles to store trauma and stress. Overstimulated, the poor psoas winds itself up like a winch, tugging on the lower back, pelvis, and leg in a fashion that can become most unpleasant after not so long.
My psoas is seriously overactive. We have a rocky relationship, my psoas and me. I do appreciate the way that it hoists my legs up in the air, and allows me to keep my torso upright, but like a meddlesome maiden aunt it wants to be involved in everything I do, all the time, and manages to make a terrible mess of an otherwise straightforward situation.
From an early age I have suffered from lordosis, otherwise known as a sway back. Kids used to tease me and say I was pregnant because when I was in grade school my comfortable way of standing was with my back so arched that you could have balanced a teapot on the base of my spine. I was brought to you by the letter 'S'.
Of course, it didn't hurt back then. But the more mileage I put on these bones the more my overenthusiastic soas tugs on me. When I poke at it through my abdominal wall I can feel it like a steel cable. If I sit for too long, say on my regular SF-LA commute, it contracts to the point that I am in constant pain until I go into some deep contortion stretches.
But contortion is where the psoas really messes me up. While a short psoas and lordosis can lead to a nice bendy middle back, which I have, it eliminates the possibility of bending in your hips or lower back. How can I lengthen the front of my hips when they are clamped in place by this psychotic muscle?
When I stretch my lower back I can feel the psoas straining against me, and I can't seem to get it to relax. If I push through it I feel as though I am pushing into the very depths of the netherworld. My vision blurs, a ringing in my ears clangs as an alarm bell... turn back now it says. I get queasy and I am filled with an overwhelming urge to run, and a sharp certainty of immanent death. It's no fun.
However I do it, five days a week, over and over again. I pull on that psoas muscle, releasing its load of primal panic into my system, and taste the underworld in my mouth. I've been pushing in particularly hard for the last month or so because its hampering my handstands by contracting at random times and pulling me off balance. I'm trying to stretch it into submission.
Sadly, I've been feeling a lumpy pain in my right psoas and I have a feeling that the stubborn creeper has yanked at the tendon with a tad too much zeal and I'm a bit strained. Now I have to back off, apply ice, and wait it out.
I'm not giving up though. Once the strain has improved I will once again venture into the dark reaches of the psoas, and it will stretch. It will.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Lights up: Lights out
One of the exciting things about life is having new experiences. I've always abhorred the idea of doing the same thing every day, never pushing into unfamiliar territory, never taking a risk. But the downside of living life always one or two steps outside of your comfort zone is that sometimes you take one step too many. That's what happened tonight.
I performed at a fundraising event held at the circus school where I just started to teach a stretching class. It is run by some former Cirque du Soleil performers and so far it is the most welcoming and positive environment I have found in which to do my bendy thang in LA. This is the first time I have performed for these folks and, even though it was a low-pressure "ambient" performance, no choreography, I wanted to bring off a good debut.
Being a late blooming performer, and an unlikely contortionist, I suffer from a meddlesome inferiority complex. I am always surrounded by people who have been in the circus world for far longer than I have, who have impressive skills, and are sometimes too young to remember when Guns N Roses were good. So get insecure. Most performers are insecure though, so I try not to let it overwhelm me.
But in situations like tonight, I really want to prove that I deserve to be included in the ranks of the "real" performers. So tonight I debuted my new contortion table.
I am very excited about my table. The first time I ever performed on a table was the first time I ever performed contortion, my debut with SB. I have never been more terrified of anything in my life, including when I was stranded in rural Brazil with no money, lost in a blizzard in the desert with a sprained ankle, or being interrogated in a Cuban jail. I would have happily gone back to that fetid cubicle with the surly soldier to avoid having to get up on that stage, on that table, with a top tier contortionist, surrounded by fire, in front of my whole community both friends and frenemies, and try to bend. For a week prior to the show I spent most of my time standing on the table and crying, trying just to do a backbend to bridge without having a panic attack. The day before the show I could still barely do an elbow stand, elbows precariously close to the edge of the table, without hyperventilating. I sincerely hoped that I would be hit by a car, bitten by a viper, anything to escape that performance.
I am forever grateful to both M and SB for insisting that I go through with it. SB just wouldn't hear my protestations, insisting that there was no reason why I couldn't do it. Her faith in me seemed lunatic, but it helped to pull me through. Then one night while I was lying sleepless and jittery M said, "You don't have to do it, you can back out and she can do it as a solo. But then you'll probably never do it again because it will just get harder."
I knew he was right. Certainly more practice would have made me more comfortable on the table and more certain of my tricks, but the fear would have won that battle, gaining ground against me. The next battle would have been more difficult. I could have lost the war. So I performed.
Tonight was nowhere near as terrifying. Truth is I wasn't really nervous at all. A little excited, but I've worked on other tables before and I wasn't going to do any new tricks, so I saw no reason to anticipate disaster. It wasn't until I was warmed up backstage and ready to go that I made the Bad Decision.
I should know better. I do know better. I just wasn't thinking clearly. I know that whenever you are performing on stage, the adrenaline and stage lights and the energy of the audience combine into an intoxicant more potent than vicodin washed down with Jack Daniels. You feel no pain, no limits. Pre-show fear evaporates into the laser-sharp focus of movement, energy, and balance. I know this.
When I taught fire eating I always cautioned my students against trying anything new on stage. Only one stupid thing at a time, I always told them. Performing counts as one. New things count as another. It is dangerous to try something new when you are high on show. Why, oh why, didn't I take my own advice?
At the last minute I decided to add in my new finale move. I have not practiced it very much yet because you need a table to do it, and I have not had much time with my table. From pretzel you slide your feet off the edge of the table and let them dangle in the air while your butt happily squishes against your head. It is challenging mostly because the absence of a floor under your feet means that there is extra weight pulling your back into a deeper bend, but working on the bench I've lowered my feet all the way to the floor with a spot so I thought I'd be fine. I did it once backstage right before I went on, no problem.
This was going to be my big finale, my deepest bend. The rest of the act went swimmingly. I moved confidently and relatively smoothly through all of my regular movements, interspersed with some belly dance. The table felt nice and solid, very little wobble, and even though I took out the leg scale because my hip is tight and tweeky and I didn't come into full contortion elbow stand because my hips were tightening up too much and I thought I might lose it backwards off the edge, I felt good. Just the last move. No problem.
I did my backbend, grabbed the edge of the table behind me for support, pushed my feet out into the void, and...
nothing
sound. lights. faces. buzzing noise. confusion. where am I?
The brain gets irritable when deprived of blood.
I am sitting on the floor next to my table SBY is next to me saying "you just got a little dizzy." Of course I instantly know what happened and feel like a total asshole but I am a performer first, and asshole second, so I spring to my feet and take a bow and walk off stage.
Fuck. I blacked out on stage. How terribly embarrassing.
SBY and AG are immediately backstage with icepacks and water but the truth is that I felt fine. Just irritated. How could I let that happen? How could I do something so stupid? Damn damn damn damn damn. One step too far outside the comfort zone, and I fell off the cliff. Or the table. Same difference.
The one thing that made me feel better is that, other than the circus performers, no one knew I blacked out. Apparently I am quite graceful when unconscious. I just rolled sideways and landed in a gracefully seated position beside my table, and, if I hadn't had that dizzy, bleary look on my face, I probably could have pulled it off as an unusual dismount. Luck? Years of dance training? Who cares. I can pass out like a pro.
I performed at a fundraising event held at the circus school where I just started to teach a stretching class. It is run by some former Cirque du Soleil performers and so far it is the most welcoming and positive environment I have found in which to do my bendy thang in LA. This is the first time I have performed for these folks and, even though it was a low-pressure "ambient" performance, no choreography, I wanted to bring off a good debut.
Being a late blooming performer, and an unlikely contortionist, I suffer from a meddlesome inferiority complex. I am always surrounded by people who have been in the circus world for far longer than I have, who have impressive skills, and are sometimes too young to remember when Guns N Roses were good. So get insecure. Most performers are insecure though, so I try not to let it overwhelm me.
But in situations like tonight, I really want to prove that I deserve to be included in the ranks of the "real" performers. So tonight I debuted my new contortion table.
I am very excited about my table. The first time I ever performed on a table was the first time I ever performed contortion, my debut with SB. I have never been more terrified of anything in my life, including when I was stranded in rural Brazil with no money, lost in a blizzard in the desert with a sprained ankle, or being interrogated in a Cuban jail. I would have happily gone back to that fetid cubicle with the surly soldier to avoid having to get up on that stage, on that table, with a top tier contortionist, surrounded by fire, in front of my whole community both friends and frenemies, and try to bend. For a week prior to the show I spent most of my time standing on the table and crying, trying just to do a backbend to bridge without having a panic attack. The day before the show I could still barely do an elbow stand, elbows precariously close to the edge of the table, without hyperventilating. I sincerely hoped that I would be hit by a car, bitten by a viper, anything to escape that performance.
I am forever grateful to both M and SB for insisting that I go through with it. SB just wouldn't hear my protestations, insisting that there was no reason why I couldn't do it. Her faith in me seemed lunatic, but it helped to pull me through. Then one night while I was lying sleepless and jittery M said, "You don't have to do it, you can back out and she can do it as a solo. But then you'll probably never do it again because it will just get harder."
I knew he was right. Certainly more practice would have made me more comfortable on the table and more certain of my tricks, but the fear would have won that battle, gaining ground against me. The next battle would have been more difficult. I could have lost the war. So I performed.
Tonight was nowhere near as terrifying. Truth is I wasn't really nervous at all. A little excited, but I've worked on other tables before and I wasn't going to do any new tricks, so I saw no reason to anticipate disaster. It wasn't until I was warmed up backstage and ready to go that I made the Bad Decision.
I should know better. I do know better. I just wasn't thinking clearly. I know that whenever you are performing on stage, the adrenaline and stage lights and the energy of the audience combine into an intoxicant more potent than vicodin washed down with Jack Daniels. You feel no pain, no limits. Pre-show fear evaporates into the laser-sharp focus of movement, energy, and balance. I know this.
When I taught fire eating I always cautioned my students against trying anything new on stage. Only one stupid thing at a time, I always told them. Performing counts as one. New things count as another. It is dangerous to try something new when you are high on show. Why, oh why, didn't I take my own advice?
At the last minute I decided to add in my new finale move. I have not practiced it very much yet because you need a table to do it, and I have not had much time with my table. From pretzel you slide your feet off the edge of the table and let them dangle in the air while your butt happily squishes against your head. It is challenging mostly because the absence of a floor under your feet means that there is extra weight pulling your back into a deeper bend, but working on the bench I've lowered my feet all the way to the floor with a spot so I thought I'd be fine. I did it once backstage right before I went on, no problem.
This was going to be my big finale, my deepest bend. The rest of the act went swimmingly. I moved confidently and relatively smoothly through all of my regular movements, interspersed with some belly dance. The table felt nice and solid, very little wobble, and even though I took out the leg scale because my hip is tight and tweeky and I didn't come into full contortion elbow stand because my hips were tightening up too much and I thought I might lose it backwards off the edge, I felt good. Just the last move. No problem.
I did my backbend, grabbed the edge of the table behind me for support, pushed my feet out into the void, and...
nothing
sound. lights. faces. buzzing noise. confusion. where am I?
The brain gets irritable when deprived of blood.
I am sitting on the floor next to my table SBY is next to me saying "you just got a little dizzy." Of course I instantly know what happened and feel like a total asshole but I am a performer first, and asshole second, so I spring to my feet and take a bow and walk off stage.
Fuck. I blacked out on stage. How terribly embarrassing.
SBY and AG are immediately backstage with icepacks and water but the truth is that I felt fine. Just irritated. How could I let that happen? How could I do something so stupid? Damn damn damn damn damn. One step too far outside the comfort zone, and I fell off the cliff. Or the table. Same difference.
The one thing that made me feel better is that, other than the circus performers, no one knew I blacked out. Apparently I am quite graceful when unconscious. I just rolled sideways and landed in a gracefully seated position beside my table, and, if I hadn't had that dizzy, bleary look on my face, I probably could have pulled it off as an unusual dismount. Luck? Years of dance training? Who cares. I can pass out like a pro.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Ouch
Third day in a row doing real training wish SB at the school. When I am on my own in LA I do try to push myself to the point where all I want to do is vomit, cry, then slip into a merciful coma, but it's just not the same.
There is no one to stand on my oversplits until my butt lands gently on the floor like a diver touching down at 100 feet.
No one to say "You can't go home until you do a successful tuck-up" and then hold me to it as my arms shake and I continually knock my head against the wall when they give out.
In LA there are no other contortionists at the gym, so hanging out in pretzel with my feet on the floor is impressive to all the aerial students, and I get to feel like a bendy rock star. Even when I know I could push myself further, no one else does. So sometimes, just a little, I cheat. I only stack up two mats for oversplits, when I know that I should stack up a third since the mats are so squashed from years of pounding bodies that I can easily sit on the floor with only two. I don't always do my full pretzel routine, pushing my hands forward so that all of my weight is on my chin and neck, because it makes my breathing difficult and I get panicky. As a result, I am not pushing hard enough into those areas of my body where the fear is hiding.
I can point to the things that scare me:
Training with SB makes me appreciate how much harder I need to push, so that when I am up here it doesn't feel like such a big stretch (no pun intended). Today, after four hours, I was a spot on the carpet. Still, I do hold out hope that I can train my hips to relax, my body to balance, and one day achieve some beautiful handstands and, the holy grail, mouthpiece. Yes, one day, mouthpiece.
There is no one to stand on my oversplits until my butt lands gently on the floor like a diver touching down at 100 feet.
No one to say "You can't go home until you do a successful tuck-up" and then hold me to it as my arms shake and I continually knock my head against the wall when they give out.
In LA there are no other contortionists at the gym, so hanging out in pretzel with my feet on the floor is impressive to all the aerial students, and I get to feel like a bendy rock star. Even when I know I could push myself further, no one else does. So sometimes, just a little, I cheat. I only stack up two mats for oversplits, when I know that I should stack up a third since the mats are so squashed from years of pounding bodies that I can easily sit on the floor with only two. I don't always do my full pretzel routine, pushing my hands forward so that all of my weight is on my chin and neck, because it makes my breathing difficult and I get panicky. As a result, I am not pushing hard enough into those areas of my body where the fear is hiding.
I can point to the things that scare me:
- Wrapping my feet into my armpits to prepare for push-ups, when all of my weight is on my chin and I have to use my abs to push my butt forward, squeeze my knees in, and not fall over.
- Snake in pretzel with arms up, again with the weight on the chin, off balance, total compaction of the upper back
- Dangling my feet off the edge of the table in pretzel
- Catch ankles, just because some days my lower back will not go and I feel off balance, and because it hurts my lower back and shoulders like they are full of gravel
- And last, but certainly not least, those damned handstands
Training with SB makes me appreciate how much harder I need to push, so that when I am up here it doesn't feel like such a big stretch (no pun intended). Today, after four hours, I was a spot on the carpet. Still, I do hold out hope that I can train my hips to relax, my body to balance, and one day achieve some beautiful handstands and, the holy grail, mouthpiece. Yes, one day, mouthpiece.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Why am I awake?
No seriously.
I'm still kinda snurgly, especially due to the fact that yet another chunk of LA is in flames, spewing carbon residue into the atmosphere and polluting my delicate bronchioles. I finally hauled my carcass to the circus gym to teach a class and do some desultory training that only confirmed how hopeless I have become after three entire days off from training. My hip flexors feel like piano wire and my lower back feels like it full of rusty ball bearings. All squeak and crunch, no bendy bendy.
I did enjoy teaching. Teaching people how to stretch is different than teaching dance. I do enjoy teaching dance when I have students who actually want to learn, rather than bitch about how difficult it is and how they just want to look like Shakira (good luck chubs). But stretching is more of a self-selecting bunch. Stretching kinda sucks. It hurts. It's scary. It's intense, emotional. You quickly discover that the gates to heaven and the gates to hell are closer together than you might expect. You want to stop. Now.
And going into teaching this class, I tell myself the probably most people will stop. They do with SB, after a semester or two, or just one class. Hell, I stopped a couple of times when the pain and frustration was overwhelming me. But like me, there are people out there who know that on the other side of that pain there is something beautiful. Is it freedom? Self-knowledge? Some featherlight touch of the divine? I'm still not sure, but it keeps on pulling me in deeper, sinking into the maw of the bend. I like the idea of initiating other people into this weird-ass journey. Maybe it will help me to better understand why I do this to myself. Why after every contortion performance I have to sit and cry hysterically, not from fear or pain or sadness, but something else. A profound release. A crazy river.
Plus I think I'm pretty good at teaching this. And I like being good at stuff, because I'm no zenned-out guru, I'm just another neurotic artist.
So anyway, after the gym I came home and ate a frozen dinner (shut up, it was Trader Joe's so it must be healthyish) and was almost ready to retire when a flurry of text messages called me out to Jumbo's Clown Room.
For those of you gentle readers not familiar with the LA uberhip, Jumbo's Clown Room is a hipster strip club. The girls don't get naked, and most of them have tattoos and no obvious surgical modifications, and there is clown art, all of which make it "cool." You can hang out and have a drink and imagine yourself in the nightclub where Alex (Flashdance you fools!) got her start, and you can tell yourself you aren't a perve 'cause its kinda artsy. The girls are all attractive, my friend being the by far the yummiest and one of the few that had any kind of facial expression beyond the typical stripper moue: mouth half open, lips hanging slack, eyes drooping in an indifferent stare that burns a quick passage through you, through the bar, through the dusty floorboards and the autographed pictures of porn clowns on the walls into a world without sweaty, crumpled dollar bills. Or a world with more sweaty, crumpled dollar bills, a lot more.
Then I come home, and still I'm awake. Isn't all that enough to tire me out?
Wait, I think I just got sleepy. Could it be? Yes! I'm yawning and my eyes feel a bit droopy. Gonna get on the next bus to the other side.
I'm still kinda snurgly, especially due to the fact that yet another chunk of LA is in flames, spewing carbon residue into the atmosphere and polluting my delicate bronchioles. I finally hauled my carcass to the circus gym to teach a class and do some desultory training that only confirmed how hopeless I have become after three entire days off from training. My hip flexors feel like piano wire and my lower back feels like it full of rusty ball bearings. All squeak and crunch, no bendy bendy.
I did enjoy teaching. Teaching people how to stretch is different than teaching dance. I do enjoy teaching dance when I have students who actually want to learn, rather than bitch about how difficult it is and how they just want to look like Shakira (good luck chubs). But stretching is more of a self-selecting bunch. Stretching kinda sucks. It hurts. It's scary. It's intense, emotional. You quickly discover that the gates to heaven and the gates to hell are closer together than you might expect. You want to stop. Now.
And going into teaching this class, I tell myself the probably most people will stop. They do with SB, after a semester or two, or just one class. Hell, I stopped a couple of times when the pain and frustration was overwhelming me. But like me, there are people out there who know that on the other side of that pain there is something beautiful. Is it freedom? Self-knowledge? Some featherlight touch of the divine? I'm still not sure, but it keeps on pulling me in deeper, sinking into the maw of the bend. I like the idea of initiating other people into this weird-ass journey. Maybe it will help me to better understand why I do this to myself. Why after every contortion performance I have to sit and cry hysterically, not from fear or pain or sadness, but something else. A profound release. A crazy river.
Plus I think I'm pretty good at teaching this. And I like being good at stuff, because I'm no zenned-out guru, I'm just another neurotic artist.
So anyway, after the gym I came home and ate a frozen dinner (shut up, it was Trader Joe's so it must be healthyish) and was almost ready to retire when a flurry of text messages called me out to Jumbo's Clown Room.
For those of you gentle readers not familiar with the LA uberhip, Jumbo's Clown Room is a hipster strip club. The girls don't get naked, and most of them have tattoos and no obvious surgical modifications, and there is clown art, all of which make it "cool." You can hang out and have a drink and imagine yourself in the nightclub where Alex (Flashdance you fools!) got her start, and you can tell yourself you aren't a perve 'cause its kinda artsy. The girls are all attractive, my friend being the by far the yummiest and one of the few that had any kind of facial expression beyond the typical stripper moue: mouth half open, lips hanging slack, eyes drooping in an indifferent stare that burns a quick passage through you, through the bar, through the dusty floorboards and the autographed pictures of porn clowns on the walls into a world without sweaty, crumpled dollar bills. Or a world with more sweaty, crumpled dollar bills, a lot more.
Then I come home, and still I'm awake. Isn't all that enough to tire me out?
Wait, I think I just got sleepy. Could it be? Yes! I'm yawning and my eyes feel a bit droopy. Gonna get on the next bus to the other side.
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