Letting Go Fights Back

So I had been dreading this workshop on the anatomy of the belly forever because my first experience with the instructor had been less than positive, I'll just say. But that was at the beginning of our yoga teacher training and now we are nearing the end. Did I think to myself "Well I'll put that experience in the past and go in with fresh eyes and ears and heart and open myself to new possibilities." Let's just say I tried and tried, but honestly I could not. I was dreading and dreading too much. I thought this teacher was full of baloney and half-baked and goofy and I had to acknowledge that I still had those feelings or I would be lying to myself. I wanted to put them aside, but the stubborn holder on in me would not let them go.
So Saturday morning Tim and I tried to find the studio, which is in our neighborhood, but has no outward sign, just the address, which we hadn't written down, so we drove up and down the street looking for someone in teacher training until we found someone. I also had convinced myself that the studio would be icky and uncomfortable. It was quite the opposite. It was clean and large and had nice, new low pile carpeting, plenty of props, two bathrooms, very spacious. It was about the opposite of what I expected, so I immediately felt comfortable when I walked in and unrolled my mat. For some reason that feeling of comfort just gave me over to the whole experience and I let go of all my past resistences to this teacher and my mistrust of her, dislike of her, my feelings that she didn't know anything about yoga - especially my kind of yoga, Ashtanga yoga. In fact I realized that she was saying a lot of the same things that she had said in the first workshop, but I was hearing them in a completely different way. Something in me had woken up, opened up, my perception, my awareness, whatever you choose to call it was no longer threatened by other people's agendas. I can have my own feelings, I can own them and not be attached to them, they can come and go and other people can do the same - or not. But I am ultimately responsible for how I perceive and accept information and I don't have to judge - it can just be, there, in the world, with or without my interaction.
We did some asanas and I had decided to give myself over to this new feeling of trust and letting go and it felt amazing. I went farther and farther in every pose. I felt new sensations throughout my whole body. I let go of any resistance I was asked to, that I was aware of, that I possible could. I went home Saturday night. Since we'd been working on the belly area I wasn't that hungry and I'd also developed a migraine the size of Texas from a storm that blew through. So I didn't eat much and just laid on the couch and read and watched t.v. Sunday morning I woke up and I couldn't move. My back had gone into complete spasm.
Ultimately I did make it out of bed and into the shower and took some ibuprofen. That all helped. I felt much better when I got to the studio. I confessed to my back pain and was told that was good because it meant that the muscles were releasing. We did more asana and I worked with the guidelines that we'd been given the day before. I let go and let go and let go some more. I surprised myself with the amount of letting go I could do when I brought my attention to it. It felt amazing. When we broke for lunch I was exhausted, so I drank my energy juice and had my carrots and Clif bar and then went back to the studio to read. Eventually I fell asleep so soundly that I was drooling on my mat. After a while I woke up and sat up to see if I could work any of the kinks out and the instructor came over and rubbed my back to bring the blood back into it. She said it felt more pliable already.
After lunch we had a review session. I finally found a comfortable position laying over a rolled up blanket in the fetal position. But I was still accepting, still open. Am I crazy? I don't know. That night I called my mentor, teacher, massage therapist and asked if he was available Monday (today) and described what had happened. He said it sounded like a chiropractic adjustment. Interesting - he said, I thought. He said no practice until he saw me, which he wouldn't have to tell me now, though I may have tried. I am going to attempt to sit for meditation. Like I told one of my other friends, it might not be the way that I choose to practice, because I know there are other people who have gotten similar results without this kind of pain, but I'm glad that I let myself go there and experience it.