I taught a lovely one-on-one session on Friday with a new student. It was a lunchtime class but it was raining outside and only one person showed up.
Since I love sharing yoga one-on-one, we went ahead with the class anyway. Pretty early on, the student said to me:
“I don’t do headstands or inversions, just so you know”.
“I don’t either”, I replied, honestly.
And so the conversation began. How can I be a yoga teacher if I don’t do headstands?
One of the things I loved and respected most about my teacher training was that this was okay. After all, I was learning to teach yoga, not learning to perform in Cirque de Soleil. I was never made to feel stupid or inadequate because I didn’t want to hang out on my head and I couldn’t effortlessly push up into Wheel Pose (Danurasana). Hey, I can’t even kick up into handstand! Thank you to Heather Agnew from Yoga Trinity for teaching me to respect my own body and my own level of flexibility. More flexible does not necessarily equal better or healthier.
Like many people, I practise yoga so I can get out of bed in the morning without feeling stiff. Each morning, I reach down and try to touch my toes in the shower. I can tell how much yoga I have (or haven’t) been doing, based on how close I get. I bend my knees and enjoy the hamstring and back stretch of a deep forward bend, planting my palms on the floor of the shower while the water washes over me.
I’ve had many injuries in my life, including 2 significant back injuries. The first was a car accident when I was 18. I slid out in the rain (going at 40km per hour up hill, I might add), hit an embankment and rolled my parents’ car. I think the real damage came when I hastily undid my seatbelt and fell down onto my head. The other accident involved me running full-pelt into a wire fence while playing frisbee. It was sunset and I was looking at the frisbee rather than the fence. I hit the fence at waist height, pivoted over it and landed on my shoulders and my head. I think I might have dislocated my jaw (based on the pain and swelling!). My lower back came down on top of a rock. I was at a wedding in Namadgi National Park at the time, so decided to stay and ice it rather than go to hospital. My back has never been the same. I have chronic sciatica-like pain in both legs and I can’t sit or stand for long periods of time.
To manage it. I find that walking helps a lot, and so does yoga. I do my yoga slowly, carefully and gently. I bend my knees in forward folds. I listen to my body and come to child’s pose when I need to. I rarely do shoulderstand. I don’t do any big backbends. I’m slowly improving the range of movement in my spine but I know that it will be years, not months until I can do a full backbend. I’m okay with that.
How can I teach? I actual think it’s a blessing rather than a curse. I don’t take my students’ bodies for granted. I’m lucky to have a good enough understanding of anatomy (from 4 years of medical studies) to be able guide people and assist them safely without doing it myself.
As I said to my student on Friday:
“Yoga is about learning to move as best as you can in the body that you have. Stop comparing yourself to flexible lycra-clad twenty-something women. Make friends with your own body. Enjoy and accept what yoga gives you.”
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