Being flexible doesn't make you a better person? I heard this in a yoga class many years ago and I remember how it stopped me in my tracks. You mean I don't have to strive to be more flexible than the person next to me? This was a mind blowing concept because my whole life I worked extremely hard at becoming more flexible because it meant I WAS in some ways better. If I can kick my leg higher and hold an extension chances are I would be chosen over the next dancer...that's what I told myself anyway. Rewiring how I thought about flexibility took a long time and if I'm not careful my body can easily push past that intelligent edge just out of habitual patterns or samskaras which are deeply embedded in us all.
It takes a lot of effort for a bendy person to pull back. For me I always felt like I wasn't working hard enough if I wasn't pushing to the limit. Little did I know I was only causing harm by overstretching my joints, muscles and ligaments. When someone is hyper mobile in their joints they are extremely flexible. In order to feel like they're getting something out of the pose the tendency is to push themselves to the edge of the stretch unaware of the potential damage this may cause to their knees, elbows, shoulders, neck and low back. It always feels good in the moment but repetitive stress injuries (RSI) have a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it. Haven't you ever experienced waking up one more morning and out of the blue you're injured? Something hurts but you can't remember doing anything to yourself the day before? This doesn't only happen in your yoga practice, just the way you move through your day can have a major impact of how you feel and can attribute to the imbalances in your body. How you stand and hold your posture, how you sit in a chair, how you pick up heavy objects is all connected to how you feel on a daily basis.
Learning the importance of good posture throughout the day and practicing yoga from a place of integrity also comes with age. Being 42 I feel the difference in my body and I'm experiencing how much longer an injury takes to heal as I get older. We spend the earlier years of our life thinking we're invincible. We train hard, work hard and for the most part beat the heck out of our bodies, athletes, dancers, performers, gymnasts, etc. It wasn't until I hit a point somewhere in my early thirties where I started desperately trying to put myself back together and I hear the same story with many of the amazing people I work with.
I often tell my students that you don't have to be flexible to do yoga. For many people this seems to be the very first thing they become concerned with and immediately they write off the idea. This fear that yoga is all about twisting your body into a pretzel while standing on your head is simply the farthest thing from the truth. Yoga is for anyone at any stage of life and what happens on the outside means nothing. It's not about touching your toes or about putting yourself into fancy shapes, it's about calming the fluctuations of the mind. We use the body as a way of getting us to a calmer state within but Yoga is all about the mind.
When it comes to flexibility I would much rather work with a stiff body over a bendy body. It's much harder to pull someone out of pose because they will absolutely think you're ruining their pose. In a class setting you can't really give a long explanation and this often causes confusion. I clearly remember a time when I thought a teacher was crazy when they turned my arms "correctly" in down dog. It was much harder to do it their way and when they walked away I would just go back to my way... clueless about alignment at that time I ended up with a lot of wrist and elbow issues for many years. What a stiff body lacks in flexibility they make up for in stability. A bendy body has the flexibility but they lack the stability needed around the joints to prevent injury. We teach all about this stuff in teacher training; how to modify, how to strengthen and how to prevent injuries.
So the next time you look over at that person whose overly flexible and wish you looked like them I hope you keep all this in mind. Just because you can go that deeply in a pose doesn't mean you necessarily should.
"Your practice today should not affect your practice tomorrow."
Namaste' Sweet People
xoxo Dani
haha!
