The Pose you Hate Might Be the One Your Intuition Is Telling You Doesn’t Work For You Right Now
Part 1
The above sentence is a rewrite of the commonly spoken idea ” the pose you hate the most is the one you need to practice most.”
Ugh. I loathe that sentence.
I’m going to practice never saying it, although it’s possible I’ve said it in the past because I’ve said some really stupid shit during the 40 years I’ve taught movement.
@alexandriacrowyoga posted the sentence rewrite on instagram.
She regularly posts “conversation starters” on IG for yoga teachers and practitioners.
One of the things social media has gifted me is a small, but growing tribe of movement teachers/coaches who, like me, question how movement has and is being taught, particularly what messages the teacher gives the student.
OK, so the cliff notes for this muse are this:
We “should” not subject ourselves to a certain shape or action on the yoga mat because we somehow “need” it or someone tells us we should.
Period.
I have three main thoughts about this idea.
The first is that we should be reinforcing and supporting agency for one another in our yoga asana practice.
Agency is the ability to take action or choose what action to take.
I know this can be hard to do in a group class setting.
You do not owe anyone an explanation about why you choose to not move your body a certain way or why you don’t appreciate a certain shape or movement action. Ever.
As a student I must learn to make choices that serve me.
As a teacher, I must give 100% support to everyone making their individual choices and offer suggestions for exploration.
Your teacher does not know you and your body better than you do.
The second thing is that it’s common to be told that a yoga pose or a movement will do something for us that has absolutely no scientific evidence to back up the claim.
I know that in the earlier years of teaching I often regurgitated things I had heard or read about the effects of certain poses/actions.
I now hold myself to a much higher standard – if I can’t explain the “why” to something I am teaching then I either don’t say it/teach it or I start off by saying “this is anecdotal…”
For instance, there is no scientific research proving a correlation between twisting postures and the wringing of toxins out of our body.
I cringe as I think about how many times I said this in classes. Ugh.
Our liver and lymphatic system evolved to be exceptionally good at doing the job of constantly flushing toxins out of our body even if we never do Maricyasana 3 again.
Rotation is a vital aspect of human movement, so if you like twists and they feel good, do them, but they aren’t the panacea of toxin removal.
Finally, sometimes a shape doesn’t work for us because we all have unique anatomies.
We all have various ranges of motion, skeletal proportions, and some of us may have trauma based reasons that make it hard to feel safe doing something.
Your femur may sit in the socket differently than another person’s femur making certain seated postures nearly impossible no matter how hard you work on that shape.
The length of your torso to your legs may make certain arm balances next to impossible. It’s proportion, not lack of core or shoulder strength.
And as Alexandria suggests in her conversation post on this topic, “maybe you just can’t put your finger on why, but it doesn’t feel right to you.”
Let’s recap:
It is completely 100% valid not to enjoy or prefer a certain pose or shape for whatever reason – you never have to explain this to anyone, not even your teacher.
Use your agency when you take class and practice. Here’s my opinion – it is probably more important for us to develop agency from our practice than achieving a certain shape.
Your teacher does not know your body and your needs more than you do.
A lot of things get said about particular yoga poses that have no scientific evidence to back the particular claim – if a teacher can’t give us a reason based in fact, then maybe we should question where the idea came from.
We all have unique anatomies and experiences that allow us to enjoy, appreciate, or prefer certain shapes/movements more than others.
Next week I’ll present Part 2 of this muse where I speak to a pose I don’t prefer.
