Kickboxing and I

I was movement crazy as a child. Scrawny, dying but needed movement to breathe. It was a terrible combination, but I would often forget to eat, but could skip for hours. So that sort of manic activity could make anyone sick, na?

My dad used to pick me up from school, on his way from office. Often I will be only one in the campus, a small child, as the sky darkened, bored with waiting. So, I would skip rope maniacally to beat the boredom. Then I used to cycle crazily. I was like that, needed the rush of movement to relieve me of the anxiety of being oversensitive. Everybody's pain was mine. Nowadays also, where I may seem as brusque, that is only a front. I still feel like a turtle without its cover. And my biggest problem spiritually and I hate this, is that I want to give  everybody the  right to think the way they do. That means I comply.  Often, the person most hurt by this is, of course, I myself) Then, I turn brusque, and hope everybody runs off, so I did not have to think for them:)  I do not do kickboxing for improving my yoga. I do it as a catharsis for this spiritual riddle that rides and tortures me. For me yoga is too meditative to give vent physically... I am flowing, not venting. In kickboxing I am reduced to being a student, my mind is divested of all illusions of myself as someone who understands the body. I founder, am awkward physically, I hurt a lot (body sore from trying hard), I find coordination  difficult. I am once more a student... and I believe this how I remain humble as a teacher. Most yoga teachers have a halo, often strung around their head by themselves. I don't want to be anything remotely like those people... So I do kickboxing for all the wrong reasons, and none of it remotely to do with improving my yoga practice.


So, yes, I do kickboxing and some of my students think that may be why I can stretch and flex and do this or that. On the contrary, I have lost some poses to kickboxing. I am putting them down:

• Hand lock in the half-spinal twist.I used to be able to reach for my wrists, nowadays if my fingers touch each other it is a surprise to me. That is because the upper back is highly stressed from punching and stiffens. 
• Standing Malasana. I could twist my hand around the knee from front and stand on one leg. Not anymore. 
• Baddha padmasana. This is one pose whose loss I really mourn.. and I know I have to struggle all the way back to getting it, where my hand and toe are four to half foot away:( 

There are more. But, and this may surprise some people, some very basic which give me trouble, especially a day after kickboxing:

• Gomukh 
• Padmasana .. I snapped my knee (same left one) twice over the last three years after starting this practice.  Each time to the point where I thought it will never get back to normal:( And I thought I had lost my knee forever.   So yes, my padmasana gives me trouble. And I cannot sit in it long without excruciating discomfort. 
•  Paschimottanasana. 
• All squats. 
• Crow (yes, the wrists are sore after punching, so I really hurt when I go up in the basic crow!! Surprise suprise). 
• Peacock. (Same reason as above). 
• Wheel variations (Same reasons, but the shoulders crack up).