I always remind my students to listen to their body. It sounds such a simple thing, but it might also be the hardest thing in a yoga class. Wait, what?
The ego often whispers in our ears that we have to go deeper, do more, and push further, but the truth is, we need to go only as far that we can take, and that's where we need to listen to our very own body. If we don't, we might injure ourselves, or worse, lose the joy of the practice. We need to accept that every day is different, and so is every practice. On the other hand, if we could do all the asanas in all yoga classes with zero feeling of a challenge, it might get a bit boring. Finding that balance between challenge and own limits is the tricky part.
You know what is good for your unique body better than anyone. We all have different level of natural flexibility and strength, and we all have unique dimensions and a history with injuries. Some poses that some people may have to practice for years to master are accessible to others on the first try. And some poses will never be possible to some people, because they have had an injury, or they have a different bone structure.
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It's always possible to make adjustments to the poses, do a variation, hold a pose for only a short time, or even skip the asana that is not for you. It is okay. It is allowed. It doesn't make you less of a yoga practitioner, in fact, it makes you better. When you learn what your body can do (now there's a difference between physical and mental barriers), what it needs, and when you accept your body as it is today but also what it can be tomorrow, you are already four steps closer to contentment. We are not meant to make our body fit the asana perfectly, we make the asana fit our already perfect body. Just like at the gym, we start with the smaller weights to get the technique right, and then we gradually add more weight as we get stronger.
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Here is one example how you can test your own unique dimensions to see how it may affect your own yoga practice. Start by sitting on the floor with your legs straight in front of you, and place your hands on the floor next to your hips. Keeping your back straight, are your arms also straight or a little bit bent? My arms would reach the floor but there wouldn't be much of a bend, as I have short arms! This means that if I would try to push my bum up from the floor (see the picture), my bum wouldn't get very high and it's difficult to keep the back straight. I would have to use A LOT of abdominal strength if I wanted to lift my feet from the ground too. However, people with longer arms can lift their bum up from the floor with relative ease, and as they have more elevation, it's a bit easier for them to lift the feet from the floor as well!
Now, if you think of a pose like half moon, people with shorter arms have to dive a bit lower to get their hand on the floor, if their legs are longer than their arms. There we can use blocks to help ourselves, but it's just one more example to see how we can adjust the asana to fit our body, not the other way round.
The achiever in us may whisper to us during a yoga class that we have to be able to do everything. We rarely give ourselves enough credit for just being and doing the things we can at that moment. We don't have to be able to do it all or beat our personal best every time we do something, otherwise we might just lose the joy in it all. We all have our strengths in different asanas, and part of the joy comes from exploring, learning and enjoying the process.
Love,
Kia