So your in your yoga class and the teacher gives you a posture that you find a challenge even in the modified variation, BUT everyone around you goes past the modified version and goes straight through to the advanced asana. What do you do, stay with your good alignment and strength, deepen into the posture your in or sod your alignment and jump straight into the deep end?
I see this happen so many times. Students struggle with the modifies or first stage as i like to call it and go straight through to the deep end when they are struggling with the basics of the posture.
Why do we do this? why do we push our selves out of our limits to a dangerous place? ego, pressure on ourselves, worried about what the others around think, see? just being unaware of our own body-not listening deep within? I guess all the things listed are reasons to why we jump straight into a posture that we may not feel sure of doing in the first place.
So how do we help ourselves to listen more deeper? Well i guess the first steps that you can take is to be fully aware of your body and breath in postures, what is it doing? how is the breath? is the breath struggling? Do you feel that you are doing a huge amount in the first stage? If so why go further? just embrace the sensations the feelings and breath deep. We are so quick to rush into postures to achieve perfection when there really is no such thing. If everyone could reach the final stage and do it with correct alignment what would we have to work towards? And what a boring place the world would be.
Embrace each stage of a posture, focus more on correct alignment than flinging yourself into a posture that may just be weakening other areas because alignment starts to flake.
As i say safety and alignment is much more important that getting into a deeper posture which may hindering your body and cause problems.
Embrace yourself as an individual, love your body for what it can not do as well as what it can do, take a deep breath and be grateful.
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