Close to the edge..
When we make physical postures in a yoga practice, a good teacher will always advise to stay within your healthy, natural range of movement. And not to push beyond that edge - in order to prevent injury, if not immediate then potentially built up to reveal itself later, after months or years of unhealthy repeated movement.
It can be a struggle to help people keep their ego self in check as it’s common to want to push as far as possible into a posture, make it ‘harder’, feel it more. Especially for the very hyper-flexible (and a reminder that these bendy folk are a minority in the real world but often a majority in yoga classes, leading to the MYTH that you have to be super stretchy to even take up yoga.. a tangent I’ll save for another day).
But when it comes to helping people see the deeper meaning behind the physical shapes, I’m losing count of the occasions where I wish I could actually persuade people to move beyond an edge - the mental ‘edge’ - within which is the fixed-in-stone belief that yoga relates only or mainly to what the body looks like.
Teachers are often asked things like ‘How long did it take you to be able to sit like that/do that pose etc?’ but very rarely, if ever, ‘How long did it take you to realise that the physical shapes are secondary?’ or, ‘How many minutes/hours a day do you work on your mind?’
Recently I’ve had several instances where I’ve had questions, or assumptions made, about my physicality, related to the common perceptions held about a yoga practice, or yoga teachers. One was well-meant and I suppose, genuinely just borne from curiosity, about how many hours of yoga I do a day - the (again, well-intentioned) desire behind the question to find out how I look the way I do at my age, which was a surprise to the speaker. (I had recently turned 50).
On that day, I was feeling exhausted, emotional and rocked to have found out just the day before that I have osteoporosis in my lower spine, and I don’t think I fully succeeded in withholding a slightly snappy response about yoga not being just physical.
Another of these comments was a friend’s response upon hearing about my bone scan result, along the lines of ‘What? But you’re a mega strong yoga bunny!’, or similar.
My point to sharing these situations is just to highlight, from personal experience, just how strong the assumption is for many, that yoga is basically a gym class and that those who teach/do it must be superhero strong and never have any physical ailments.
Maybe I’m feeling reactionary as these recent comments related to a very personal matter, at a time of life where there has been a lot of change for me, in every way. But, I still think there’s a lesson, or point of discussion here to analyse and attempt, again, to get across what the truth of yoga really is.
The true yoga isn’t that I’m super-hero strong and will remain physically so forever, or that I’m able to sit in lotus, or do a headstand. The true yoga, which I know is a direct result of my yoga/mind practice, is that after my initial shock and upset on seeing the text telling me my scan showed osteoporosis, my immediate next thoughts were how lucky I was that I’d even been suggested to have the scan by a great doctor, how thankful to have the news now before it worsens, how grateful that I already lead a moderately healthy lifestyle and have the knowledge and contacts to be able to do everything I now can to prevent it getting too much worse.
Yes, some people just naturally have a positive attitude and their instinct is to see the upside straight away, but I don’t. I need to constantly notice and quieten the negativity, the judgement, criticism, of myself and of others. And I know I’m not alone in that.
Regulars to my classes will know that I talk a lot about the more mindful side of things, and the reason is that it has been, and still is, so powerful for me, and I believe is the real point in doing any kind of yoga practice. If initially, we’re guided to observe and be really present in how our bodies move, it’s then a gentle step to firstly, realising that we actually can notice our mind’s movements too, and then questioning why they are so. From there, the path to a more aware and content life begins.
While physically, staying safe within a comfortable edge is the right thing to do, when it comes to the mind, can we move beyond the limitations of our current thoughts? Arguably, one of the biggest causes of conflict in the world today is an unshakeable, concrete, narrow way of thinking, with condemnation of any who think differently and no attempt even to find shared understanding. It feels sometimes that there’s nothing we can do about huge world crises, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels hopeless at times. But all we can do is start with ourselves.
So, how many minutes today will you spend making your mind more flexible, moving beyond your edge?
