Almost straight

Practice has been consistent since my week in Lisbon, doing the new type of dropback without Isa assisting me has been interesting, well it showed just how much she much have been assisting, even if it didn’t actually feel like it at the time. It takes quite a few goes on my own to get the control and bend in the upper back to land on my Bolster and on a good day on to just one layer of blocks.

AYL was beyond a sauna, I thought the early morning rain would cool it down, but it just seemed to make it more humid and sticky. Once inside the heat was tiring, Louise had opened all the top windows but it made no difference. The rivers poured in standing, little waterfalls off my elbows. Some poses are easier when it’s like that, Supta K and Garbha without having to look for the spray bottle. Some are made much harder, Isa had got me doing the Bhakasana exit in Lisbon which I’ve continued, but in that heat my knees just slid off my arms before I had a chance to get my toes and heals together, narrowly avoiding nose splat.

The postures are pretty consistent again now, though with doing all the vinyasas again I’m still not back to the stamina levels I need. Louise usually assists my last pose Bhekasana, when she let go I was wiped. I was hoping the flexibility I had in the heat would let me drop back on my own, but I didn’t have the energy left to control it and was glad when help arrived, the hang backs weren’t bad though.

I think everyone felt the heat, after practice five of us sat round a cafe table, we all had that knackered, spaced out look.

Monday is now physiotherapy day, weekly private physio is much more intense and invasive than a once a month 20min session with the NHS. It’s certainly more effective, she always begins with a session of digging her thumbs in to the back of the shoulder area to loosen it all up before she starts on the front. The scar has healed nicely after all the stitch problems, just as well, as she then pushes her palm harder and harder in to the scar area while at the same time my arm is raised and pushed backwards. Breaking down what scar tissue there is. There comes a point where the arm won’t go any further, it’s not painful, it just won’t go, but each week she seems to get it a little further, my arm is almost straight. She said it’s not just a case that the fracture is fixed and the muscles and tendons are working again, part of the restriction seems to be that the Humeral head and the shoulder bones have ended up closer together, effectively they don’t have as much space as they did pre fracture to move around in. The left has around 80% of the range of motion of the right. Hopefully in the 7 sessions left she will have me functioning again.