Yoga for life
I am writing in a week when I expected to be in hospital, starting a long recovery from pioneering surgery to rebuild my shoulder. I’m not. And I am very grateful. Mine was elective surgery so I could choose, as I have, to delay it. The operation would fix my arm for daily life, but the surgeon couldn’t say I’d have a vinyasa yoga practice afterwards. Yoga is a huge part of my life. Hard trade off. Tough choice for my identity too.
For the last 18 months, I thought it was the solution. Every day in the last year was planned towards October surgery. But as the time drew near, I was so scared. Frightened of whom I might be on the other side. When our identities are challenged, it can be harder than physical pain.
Difficult dilemmas need sharing - not toughing them out alone with our fear. Finally I asked for help from people in our community: they kindly gave their time to listen and to reflect. And just them giving it, made me know I am loved.
Acceptance
I’ve had a wake up call. My shoulder will inevitably need a structural fix AND I don’t want to loose my practice. I don’t have to. But I will need to adapt.
As the Buddhist monk Pema Chodron teaches through her meditations, we need to ‘Start From Where We Are’. To do otherwise is to frustrate ourselves: conceptually spinning, multiplying thoughts and creating unnecessary drama that overcomplicates the reality of ‘what is’. I’ve been there. I’ve wasted both valuable energy and mental focus which could be better directed into the solution.
Acceptance is easier said than done. I have that sort of personality that wants to defy life; to laugh at acceptance and plough my own furrow. But this approach creates cognitive friction, putting resistance out into the world. When the surgeon said I wouldn’t handstand after the operation, my immediate reaction was to challenge him - “of course I will, I can do them now”. He pointed out that the only way I could be with my injuries would be further damaging the long term health of my joint. I caught my ego thinking, “if I really am going to lose handstands, I’ll just do as many as I can now”. That attitude is no doubt how I’ve now ended up with two damaged arms! You cannot fight reality. Reality will always win.
It reminded me of an entry I'd written in one of my journals in January 2020. It was advice from two Stamford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in their book Designing Your Life.
People fight reality They fight it tooth and nail, with everything they've got. And any time you're fighting reality, reality will win. You can't outsmart reality. You can't trick it. You can't bend it to your will. Not now, not ever. The only response to a reality problem is acceptance. Start from where you are.>
Six year later, still trying to bend life to my will, I picked up Pema Chodron's book at one of my yoga retreats. The Universe is sending me a message.
Pivoting
Our bodies have limits - particularly as we age - repetitive actions without compensating strengthening leads to injury. I see many clients with injuries looking for rehabilitation through yoga. Mostly their problems stem from doing too much of one thing without compensating strengthening or stretching.
To pivot I must loosen my ego, my need to be the best, hanging on to things that quite frankly aren’t just no longer serving me, but are shortening the life of my practice. I need to let go of that part of my identity and start out-smarting my ego. Being a rebellious teenager at 62 probably doesn’t serve me.
Yoga can be - IS - many things.
Yoga is very good at:
- Teaching us to breathe fully ( no you really don’t)
- Focusing the mind
- Increasing our awareness
- Increasing flexibility
- Developing peacefulness
- Helping us to be still and quiet
- Moving strongly and rhythmically
- Understanding our bodies - building proprioception (knowing where we are in space) and - - - - interoception (feeling ourselves on the inside)
- Building isometric strength - long lean muscles
- Improving co-ordination and balance
- Helping us to ground - be less affected by the drama of life around us
- Increasing mobility
- Helping you understand and accept yourself for who you are
- Building community between like minded people
Yoga is all these things...but it can’t be all of them to everyone at the same time in the same class. That’s why I already teach varied styles of yoga. And even in the more dynamic weight bearing styles, yoga still doesn’t build an all round stronger body.
Developing our yoga practice to avoid injury
At different points in our life we need different things. As we age, whether that’s 30 to 40, or 40 to 60, or into retirement, our physical needs change and our sense of who we are shifts. Equally what we need from our practice shifts. I will be focusing on our LONG TERM health and wellness. That means incorporating more strength work into the practice: creating stability before flexibility and strong muscles to maintain our mobility. I’ve already started re-training with my teacher Jason Crandell to be able to incorporate resistance work into classes.
But don’t worry, I will still be teaching yoga because unlike any other movement class, yoga is underlined by an ancient philosophy. A set of spiritual teachings that give meaning to the movement and the breath work and the meditation. We will be practising those.
Keeping all the best things about yoga
There are many things we love about yoga. Yoga invites you into stillness and peacefulness. In that spaciousness the heart opens and the magic begins. It is where self transformation quietly occurs. We notice ourselves. We stop for a moment to acknowledge who we are without drifting off into other thoughts. It’s like catching our reflection in the mirror nd seeing something new. There is a moment of recognition, of naked truth. No more need to hold up our facade to the world, our protective mask. We breathe and relax. We let go, finally we just let go. Then we trust and befriend ourselves.
From that point on, you will always have a yoga practice because yoga really isn’t about your ability to do a handstand or any other pose. And maybe, like me, you won’t truly accept that until something happens to stop you just carrying on as you are doing everything you love as often as you like. Its a moment of true learning.
There are so many things that I CAN do - wonderful things - I’m going to use this experience to help myself get stronger as I age. I will be focusing on LONG TERM health and wellness. Over the next few weeks I’ll start teaching what I’m learning so you too can have the best possible life for longer.
Andrea Hill
EYRT500-registered senior yoga teacher with over 10,000 hours of teaching experience. Based in Duxford, Cambridge, Andrea offers private lessons, group classes, and international yoga retreats.
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