I thought I would share a couple ‘case studies’ to recognize yourself in others’ experiences and to ignite a passion for moving and healing. These students are fictional characters based on several experiences I have had with students in general that stand out:
A student came to me for yoga, with a screaming injury that would freeze and refuse to move, see-sawing bullying or dissociation tendency relationship with her body, and a mind that was all over the place, shown through a shallow erratic breathing rhythm and distracted disposition on the mat.
We started to move, we did yoga that her bullying mind wanted (because we start with the strongest impulse to avoid resistance and rebellion to stay on the proverbial mat long enough to get past this dysfunctional part of the mind-body relationship). This meant that she needed time to be in a pose, and she needed to be physically challenged to feel as much as she could in her body. She would demand of her body that it show up and would ignore her screaming muscles for the most part, except for the deltoid as the pain was too sharp. She wouldn’t dwell on the pain or be limited by it and we would continue. For a short while, I would offer poses to avoid triggering the deltoid as much as possible to give it time, to avoid her personality interference, and in the meantime, to find support from other parts of the body for this overworked muscle. Soon, we learnt how to realign so the injured area wasn’t poised to do the entire job meant for the whole body as everything is linked. From her first practice, she felt the nervous system regulatory effects of yoga. As someone used to exercise, she was surprised at this result as exercise had never given her the same feeling and the journey from doing to feeling began! From the first month, she felt her body starting to integrate muscles she had never used, and release the overworked muscles. We learnt together how to avoid her dissociation – triggered by a practice that was too fast – and how to breathe her way out of her bullying tendency. “Pause and breathe, accept the initial limitation and let your body take you deeper. If you don’t push, it will happen quicker. Patience and trust your body.”
She has started to feel more in her body by working less forcefully, so now she was being challenged physically, but with a whole new approach! She experienced that she could go further with less ‘strength’ as she knew it, but the reality was, it was with less tension. It is tension – learnt, assumed as necessary, habitual – that makes our effort exhausting. A yoga practice is meant to invigorate the body not make it tired. This is a metaphor for life. She learnt to breathe a little more on purpose, though breaths are still quite shallow, it’s a process. Instead of trying not to think, she put her thoughts into experiencing her body, and a weightless, powerful strength arose, and MORE of the feeling experience of herself. You can literally see her nervous system regulating and this warm calm glow settling into her movements.
Besides see-sawing between bullying or dissociation, there is the student who shows up and doesn’t engage her body at all, a type of dissociation steeped in remaining always comfortable or not confronted, small movements feeling like too much effort and really feeling into the body perhaps being triggering. Some muscles will be responsible for everything, which is why it might feel effortful but the whole body isn’t engaged, so the mind-body disconnect reads as a lack of passion or heat in the body which keeps us in a shallow experience of what’s possible.
Besides see-sawing between bullying or dissociation, there is the student who shows up and doesn’t engage her body at all, a type of dissociation steeped in remaining always comfortable or not confronted, small movements feeling like too much effort and really feeling into the body perhaps being triggering. Some muscles will be responsible for everything, which is why it might feel effortful but the whole body isn’t engaged, so the mind-body disconnect reads as a lack of passion or heat in the body which keeps us in a shallow experience of what’s possible.
This is what is possible – and more.
A student came to me, bashful of the fact that she wanted to protect a sore part of her body while excusing herself beforehand from doing ‘all’ the poses, and discouraged by some of the poses and an assumed expectation, and with it, fear, more than likely wasn’t in herself for the practice but in thought about the practice. Despite countless dialogue queues to “listen to your body”, this student swam in the currents of conflict (mind) between ‘doing the pose the teacher said’, keeping up with ‘the room’, and ‘listening to the teacher instruct to listen to your body’. There is an overwhelm when the body is in pain, which disengages listening on all levels – listening to alignment queues that would help the student find resource in the body to support the painful triggered area and listening to the part of the body that is screaming and being unable to hear any other part due to this all-consuming emotional reaction. Fear. And with it shutdown. A loss of breath. A loss of presence. And more importantly, a loss of enjoyment and personal power. This is why yoga is so profound, we get to face our fears, as we conquer the fear we experience about our body being unable to do something or in pain (our mortality), we conquer a larger energetic sequence of fears filtering through our daily existence.
On the subject of fear, especially when nursing an experience that isn’t comfortable, and to speak to the expectation in the room, there is often this idea that the yoga poses and the teacher are in control of the process and that the student must fit in. We see this in terms of yoga teaching where ‘obeying’ is almost a necessary part of subjugating the ego, as a process of limiting the students need to think about anything and just move (bypassing the limiting beliefs of the student), and also ‘obeying’ the pose which often results in the body just finding a way to show up and healing itself in the process (also bypassing the limiting beliefs of the student), but when we are in a triggered, sharp experience of our physicality it requires of us a sensitive approach to healing, a slow, patient approach and rushing to fit into an expectation in the room, of teacher, pose or Self, will only cause more injury. Having said this, from my own personal experience, ‘giving in’ to injury, to give time and space for healing and thus avoiding movement, often takes longer than actually necessary, which swings us back to listen to the body, and getting into a dance of a few steps forward, a few steps back process of learning.
When we learn to embody ourselves fully, we unlock health, support ourselves in healing injury, integrate the full use of our body (which means we will feel more), release tension (which means we will feel more). Why would you want to feel more? The language of the body is sensation. By feeling more, we activate our primary relationship with a ‘listen to hear’ philosophy instead of bullying or avoiding our body. When we listen to hear, we open to the Universe. Our body is a portal, an energy center that at first appears dense and upon working to open our mind beyond the lazy perception of the nuts and bolts of our dense physicality, we can experience ourselves as moving energy, in relationship with nature, and other. Though yoga appears to be a solitary experience, the work at first is solitary, to get into your own personal framework, which will give you access to the big picture. You have to climb into your own portal to be transported to the full picture – our minds however prevent us from this inward journey because it appears the full picture is ‘out there’ where the mind is looking…