Imagine you’re in a yoga class, and the teacher’s giving cues. The class heads for wide-legged, extended Child’s Pose (balasana). This is supposed to be an “easy” pose, but you have the world’s tightest hips and a bad knee. You watch as the other students send their knees to the edges of their mats, flatten their torsos toward the floor, and rest their foreheads on the ground. What do you do?
Do you do what everyone else is doing, or do you find your own incredible expression?
Decisions, decisions
When I started practicing yoga, I encountered this sort of thing all the time. The teacher cued something (sometimes suggesting what the full expression should look like), and I thought I simply had to get my body into whatever the shape was.
In the beginning, I used to be cruel to my body. I would force it to do things it asked me not to do. I yearned for the full expression. Maybe if I squash myself into that extended child’s pose, my body will eventually adapt. I saw the yogi next to me powering through a sequence with great ease, and I thought that was also what I needed to do. Never mind that that yogi had been practicing for ten years and they used to be a dancer.
Things are different now. I still become frustrated when I can’t do something (especially if I used to be able to do it). I still come up against choices about whether I should take certain poses at all and if I should grab a prop. I’ve developed my discernment, though, and that helps.
Every pose is different for every body every day
Our teachers tell us this sort of thing all the time in passing, but it can take a while to hear it. What works for your classmate may not work for you. What worked for you yesterday may not be appropriate now. A yoga teacher’s training and the demands of a public all-levels class dictate that the teacher may offer you options for movement in the broadest brush strokes. Of course, they’ll refine their instructions based on the people in the space, their training, and their own observations.
This variation in our experiences as individuals and from day to day is a powerful opportunity for us as students, though. You are the only one who can tell exactly how you’re feeling. What held you back yesterday may or may not apply. What propelled you forward before may no longer be the case. None of it is better or worse. It just is.
Practice agency when you practice
Teachers used to say, “The fullest expression of the pose looks like X,” but I'm pleased that we're moving away from that language. Instead of the fullest expression, we’re interested in you finding your fullest expression. What movement is going to unlock the greatest potential in you? What space will test you without creating pain? How can we balance out the scales of effort and ease?
Your classmates are having their own experience
When you practice, you can catch glimpses of people embodying this glorious sense of agency. One person may be propped up on a bolster in an extended child’s pose, while another takes the most physically challenging vinyasa you’ve ever seen. Who’s right?
As long as they’re both operating from a space of discernment, they’re both correct. I used to worry about how what I was doing stacked up against my classmates, but now I just know to do my own thing. When I’m fully engaged in my practice, I find that I’m not looking at what my classmates are doing at all. This isn’t a competition, and really understanding that has been a great gift in my practice.
A place to be
I’ve said it a bunch of times, but we’ve got new friends coming in all the time. People come to yoga for many reasons. We’re looking for comfort and movement. Perhaps we’d like to learn about navigating a stressful life, or we want to make friends. The thing I love most about the Union Yoga community is that it’s a place where I can be.
Last week, I was recovering from a cold. I dragged myself to my mat because I felt that I just had to start moving. Yoga has eight limbs, and I really wanted to work on the asana part. I’ve been trying to feel better in my physical body after being down for so long with the cold and the other health issues.
All my limbs were made of bricks as I moved through a sequence on the member archive. (Keep in mind, I used to teach this stuff a few times per week, and here I was barely making it.) I kept tried to power through, but I’m stiff, I’m sore, and sometimes these days, I just don’t bend that way. About 30 minutes into the class, I realized I’d had enough. What kind of show was I trying to put on?
At that point, I decided to just be. I let myself be slower than the video. I let myself take an extra flourish here and skip a thing that didn’t serve over there. Pretty soon, I stopped worrying about how much longer I’d have to move, and I simply was. I was totally in that moment with whatever that moment offered. My practice gave me an invitation to deepen the stretch and I took it. At another turn, my body said enough, and I accepted. Eventually, I just was all the way through savasana. We get the opportunity to be in every moment and to radically accept what that being is.
A softer approach
Much of the popular image of yoga has been shaped in the last few years with an emphasis on physical form. Certain demographics are over-represented in the zeitgeist. When I started practicing, for example, there was a real emphasis on super-athletic practices. Was one’s spiritual journey proportional to the number of inversions they could do? To my untrained eye, the answer was, “Absolutely.”
Now I know better, and I think the industry is starting to do better, but I’m seeing that students are still tough on themselves. We can have people expressing themselves fully all along the spectrum of asana. Some can be in Wheel Pose while others are in Supported Bridge, and we’re all doing our practices fully. Better yet, we’re recognizing that all that visible stuff is just a fraction of what this yoga is. It’s a kinder and more loving way of seeing and being. Now everyone gets a seat at the table. Here’s a place where I feel like I can pull up a chair too.
Come as you are.