Gravity Legs

So here's what my ocd was up to on Tuesday:

OCD: What's that on your legs?
Me: Kind of looks like broken blood vessels.
OCD: There were some last week on one leg, but now they are on both. This must be serious. You need to know what they are.
Me: Maybe the marks have been there awhile and I didn't notice until I start wearing summer clothes. It doesn't hurt or itch.
OCD: It could be connected to your low iron count. It could be really bad. What if you don't go to the doctor and then it turns out that you missed a major sign of a serious illness? Look it up.
Me: When I look things up, I deteriorate quickly. I find something scary, and then keep searching and searching.
OCD: BUT. YOU. NEED. TO. KNOW. NOW.
Me: I could go to see my doctor.
OCD: But in the meantime, look things up. You can't wait. You will implode with anxiety, and you'll start obsessing about this constantly.
Me: This uncertainty is very uncomfortable. I would like it to go away. Given a choice between websearching and going to the doctor, in spite of potential humiliation of it being nothing, I'd rather see the doctor. I'll call.
************************
OCD: Oh, man. The receptionist offered you an appointment at 4:00--it must be serious.
Me: I won't know until I get there.
OCD: What if it is really nothing? The receptionist asked if it hurt and you said no. You led her astray by calling in the first place. You are just obsessing again, and deficient as a human being. This is just like your past--seeing the doctor for reassurance.
Me: Yes, it might be nothing. Part of me really suspects it's just the effects of age. You aren't very flexible OCD--you are demanding I know ahead of time what is wrong or not wrong with my skin. That's not humanly possible.
OCD: You suck. You'll never get this right.
Me: Yeah, you could be correct, but there is no universal law that if you guess wrong before seeing the doctor, you qualify as a failure.
********************************
At the doctor's office:
Dr: Let's see what's going on with your legs. (Leans in to look.)
Hmmm. I certainly didn't think, "Oh, my goodness. What happened to your legs??" (Gets down on floor to take a closer look.) I don't think it's clinically significant. Kind of looks like broken blood vessels. Maybe it's just gravity. I can do some blood work, but I would be very surprised if something bad was going on.
********************
So here I am. I survived this visit. The biggest difference now is that I could joke about my "Gravity Legs Syndrome," with my husband. I had my blood taken today and now I wait for the results. Part of what got to me so quickly was the fear of obsessing. What if I start obsessing about this? What if the fear never dissipates? This combined with the old crap about being a failure and worthless makes for a powerful cocktail of anxiety. I felt fatigued by my OCD hypervision, but relieved that I didn't feel my value as a person was on the line when visiting the doctor, in spite watching her crawl around on the floor trying to see what I can see.

Friday Q A Shaky Legs

Red Bud Tree in Transition by Nina Zolotow

Q: Shaky legs towards mid to end of practice (standing poses and prone, like locust with lifted legs), what makes this happen? (I'm guessing they are tired.) And how to address this? Is it just a matter of strengthening?

A: Let me begin by saying that you are not alone with this phenomenon. In fact, for the first year or so of my asana practice, I'd experience the same thing, especially in poses that were held for a long time. It would sometimes recur if the level of difficulty of my asana classes went up, such as when I graduated myself from the beginner level classes to the intermediate level. In all likelihood, the muscles that start to shake are becoming fatigued to the point that the normal sustained contraction cannot be held, so you get this on-off thing happening that is felt as shaking. It may be a build up of lactic acid in the muscles, the by-product of the energy used to contract the muscles, and evidence the muscles probably need a respite. This reaction usually improves as you practice more regularly and work on the offending poses a bit in your home practice. This will begin to increase your endurance and the shaking will be a fond memory of what it was like early on in your yoga history!

—Baxter

A: I, too, experienced shaky legs during my early years of yoga practice. Shari reports that fatigue causes “muscle fasciculation,” which is incomplete contractions because the muscle efficiency has been reached and it is fatiguing. She suggests that you honor the fatigue and rest your legs. I’d like to add that I think it’s not just a matter of leg strength per se, but rather than in yoga asana we’re using our legs differently than we do in walking, running, or other forms of exercise. The example you gave of Locust pose illustrates this, because we don’t normally lift our legs backward behind us. That’s why it is only by doing more yoga (and those very same poses that fatigue your legs) that you’ll gain more endurance in those poses. I myself noticed the shaking after the strenuous poses, when I was in an inversion, such as Shoulderstand or even in a resting pose. So you might experiment with doing leg stretches after the poses that make your legs shaky to see if that helps relieve the muscle tension and relaxes your legs (and leg stretches are great counter-poses for backbends, partly because they do relax your legs after their hard work lifting you into a backbend).

—Nina

Subscribe to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook