divine angst

Bodies are weird things.

I’ve been having trouble with backward rolls in aikido. I just can’t manage to do them correctly over my left shoulder. I can do rolls over my right shoulder without much difficulty, and I can do forward rolls just fine on both sides. But no left-shoulder backward rolls yet, at least not without jacking up my neck.

It’s strange how “handed” we are, even beyond our hands. One of my hips has greater rotation (I can roll it out) and the other is more flexible (I can bend forward over it more). I can touch my back between my shoulder blades with one arm twisted up behind me, but not with the other. And I can’t do left-shoulder backward rolls without jacking up my neck.

I’m not as sore as I thought I would be today, but I think that’s just an ominous sign that the real pain is yet to come. Tomorrow, I probably won’t be able to move. We have some time off, though, since we’re going out of town for the weekend and will miss our Thursday night class. I don’t want to regress, so Mr. Angst said he’ll take me to the park and work with me on my rolls. He’s much better at rolls than I am, probably since he’s been doing them for so long.