Is self-care supposed to hurt?

I felt so smug and virtuous yesterday afternoon. Not only did I schedule a deep tissue massage with Skinned Knee Lauper to work out some of the bumps and lumps in my IT bands, I also planned my day so that I could attend a Vinyasa yoga class at The People's Yoga on Alberta beforehand. Megahurtz gave me a card good for a free class a week or so ago and I've been meaning to check it out, but with all the Nationals hub bub, it just hadn't happened yet. At 4:00 pm yesterday I thought this was a particularly fortuitous bit of procrastination because I could go to yoga, get nice and warm and limber, get my massage, and be home in time to make butternut squash soup.

Yeah. Right. Yoga kicked my ass (in its own gentle, zen way) and then it turns out the preventitive stretching and icing and self-massage I've been doing hasn't prevented much because Lauper had more than enough muscle to work on for an hour. I'm not sure whether its a good sign or a bad sign when your massage therapist is impressed by your threshold for pain. I came home, crashed on the couch, ate bread, drank tea and water, and knit until B came home. Lauper was awesome, but today I feel like I've been through the ringer.