“So I’m going through something with my back…”
This is what we say in yoga. Not: “I’m injured.”
What does this language hide; and in what ways is it more true than using the language of injury?”
For months I’ve been keeping notes on the subject of injury and astanga yoga, and noting the variations in experienced teachers’ takes on the subject. [Since many in the second generation of teachers in the SKPJ lineage are online, the web catalogues some of this variation, e.g. Anne Finstad (scroll to 8.26.06), Steve Dwelley, and Matthew Sweeney (see #3, “Easy Practice”).]
I’m not ready to write about this topic, but wanted to archive for posterity the wise comments of an adored mentor of mine (at least until he clicks over here and asks me, in his modesty, to take these down). Below are outtakes from our exchange today. His third paragraph from the bottom is like a well-polished stone— burnished with experience, and one you’ll take home from tonight’s walk while you toss others you’ve picked up back into the sea.
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IO: …Meh. It goes, but whatever is happening in my back has been… interesting. As mentioned on the blog, I took five whole days off Mysore practice and instead practiced in the afternoons in my kitchen. It was an experiment and gave me the chance to tailor. I got a better understanding of what’s holding in my back (and how it keeps changing) but it’s not like it made it all clear up….
Anyway, I seem to be inhabiting a whole different body for the past month–a delicate one. This thing is definitely maturing me, but some days I could care less about maturity if it meant I could have my kapotasana endorphins back.
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CZ: Sounds like you’re in the territory that yoga was ‘invented’ to get you through. Mumbo-jumbo aside, look around you and you’ll see that you have plenty of company.
Rejoice. You’re in juicy territory. A place with an easily identifiable obstacle.
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IO: This is an amazing email. Good luck with your crazy workday and thank you.
P.S. Are you saying that I’m only just now glimpsing what the practice is all about? That this is the name of the game? God help me I want to go back to my twenties and flow class!
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CZ: Oops. Sorry it’s too late to go back:) Don’t you just love this quote?
“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. < Morpheus”
Yep, it’s too late (lol) you took the red pill so start working on your super powers 🙂
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IO: (Phhhhhhttt….)
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CZ: It’s the old “press on or back off” fork in the road that you’ve come to. I could recount volumes about the advice I’ve heard and been given, but I’m afraid it will all sound like yoga mumbo-jumbo or new-age drivel. But here is some of it anyway:
For the first six months of Ashtanga Yoga, my hamstrings were in agony and I could hardly walk. I remember thinking “if I had to run for my life, I’d sit down and give up.” My hamstrings were screaming all hours of the day. I met C and asked him if this pain was ‘good’ and he told me something like “I can’t tell you because I’m not in your body. Maybe you’re a wimp and just complaining or maybe you have an incredible tolerance for pain. Either way only you can know for sure.”
There was another student that started practicing at the same time. His knees often bothered him and he asked M about it and talked of his knees often. In the end he concluded “it’s like the stock market, everyone has an opinion but no one knows for sure.” And yet another teacher told me when Supta Kurmasana was wreaking havoc on me “it might hurt for a week, it might hurt for ten years, who knows?”
Working with asana is a two-way dialogue with your body. You ask your body to open and to be strong and the body speaks back. When you ask in the right way and listen carefully, the body opens and floats into arm balances. Pain is the body shouting to get your attention. Stress your knee and the body shouts back “HEY BACK OFF THIS IS THE WRONG DIRECTION, OPEN YOUR HIPS YOU IDIOT!!”. But it also hurts to remove a band-aid after a cut has healed. “OK DO IT QUICK AND GET IT OVER WITH!” The former is ‘back off’ and the latter is ‘press on.’ It takes discrimination to know which is which.
Pain visits ashtangis often. I’ve heard that Guruji often doesn’t back off and says “opening, very good” even when students hobble around in pain. But I think Guruji is highly adept at knowing whether a limitation is real or imagined. And when a student is ready for more.
It seems that the Ashtanga series are progressively more difficult (or impossible), and designed to take every student to their threshold sooner or later. There you develop the discrimination to know whether to press on or back off. Because only you know for sure.
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