Be Careful What You Wish For...

Yoga Sutras 2:7-10

"Pleasure leads to desire and emotional attachment. Unhappiness leads to hatred. Self-preservation or attachment to life is the subtlest of all afflictions. It is found even in wise men. Subtle afflictions are to be minimized and eradicated by a process of involution."
-translation by B.K.S. Iyengar

Backbends have returned to my body after a few months of being mia. For the moment the tug-of-war between comfortable leg-behind-head and comfortable backbends has reached a truce. Backbends are deep and the feeling of being in need the the tin man's oil can for my hip flexors has receded. Physically, practice feels good...but along with the physical practice comes the mental and emotional layers of practice.

In my body, the return of deep backbends has brought the return of backbend "stuff"....all the stuff that you hope you might not have to look at...until you open the body and there it all is, waiting for you. When my physical practice is comfortable, the challenges appear elsewhere.

The 4 sutras above from Yoga Sutra book 2 are a good summary of my week; I've been oscillating between attachment to pleasure, irritation, impatience, and feelings of self-preservation. It's nice to think that if Patanjali felt that these sutras were important enough to include, that I likely have lots of company here.
I like that the sutra that follows these suggests that moving beyond this "stuff" is a process. The word process suggests to me that this too will take time.