Over the last few months, a number of people have told me I have a beautiful practice. While this is indubitably flattering, it is also…interesting, because my practice can best be described as ‘heavily modified’. Ok, maybe ‘intensely personalised’? Anyway, you get the picture. I am definitely a poster girl for the maxim form follows function.
For a start, I have dodgy wrists, which has more or less eliminated poses like upward facing bow, handstand and bakasana from my practice, and also resulted in me practicing chaturanga and up dog on steepled fingers. In fact, arm balances of any sort make only occasional appearances in my practice, since it’s kind of challenging to bear the weight of your whole body on your fingertips!
I have no pain if I practice this way. So I practice this way. But it is certainly not classical alignment. In fact, it’s probably enough to give The Yoga Police (I am sure they exist) conniptions.
Then, there is my equally dodgy and hypermobile lower back. These days, I tend to initiate all poses from a feeling of broadness across the back of my pelvis, so that I don’t crank into either of my SI joints, both of which are wont to dislocate at a moment’s notice. Take for example, this picture of me practicing Virabadrasana 1 (sorry it’s so small):
Here are ways in which this isn’t a classical, Light on Yoga-aligned pose:
- My feet are in line with the bones of my hips, rather than each other. This is to provide more space in my hips, preventing crunching.
- I am not very deep into the lunge. Same reasons as above. Some days I can go deeper. This was not one of those days.
- My hands aren’t touching.
- Nah…I could carry on for a while, but I suspect I don’t need to!
It does, however, look a lot more like the Viniyoga-style Warrior pose on the cover of this book:
Um, probably because it IS a Viniyoga-style pose.
Moral of the story? I appears that your poses don’t have to be the deepest, flashiest, scariest, for them to look and feel harmonious. In fact, less is often more. Form really does follow function, as the great man says. (TKV Desikachar, in case you are wondering).
I guess my friend Anja sums things up best:
I am so enjoying more and more doing viniyoga. I feel how I enjoy yoga more and more, how it becomes more and more just an integral part of me because I no longer obsess about doing the Asthanga sequence and getting frustrated with it because I get stuck.
Related articles
- SI Joint Pain and Yoga (yogawithnadine.com)
- Beginners’ Yoga: Warrior Pose (yogawithnadine.com)
- Feet (yogawithnadine.com)
Moving from Stability: Understanding the Pelvis in Posture (Online workshop)
Myinsens
Curvy Yoga by Anna Guest-Jelley
Hit the nail right on the head. I used ot adjust a lot when I began seaching Yoga – slowly my students told me, one after the other, the perfect reasons why they were intuitively adapting the postures to their own needs.
Coming originally from the Ashtanga Vinyasa tradition, I always imagined that I would adjust, but soon found a growing discomfort, a realisation that my “need” to make people do what I was telling them was coming from the ego, not a desire to help. Thankfully my studies with “the great men” (i.e. TKV Desikachar and Kausthub Desikachar) set me straight on that too.
Hi Nadine–You may have done this already, but I tagged you on my blog since I love your site:-)
(no pressure to participate)
I don’t know who the yoga cops are, but they have some ‘splaining to do. I’m not sure how you could be faulted at all for your W1. Everything is engaged and the dynamism of the pose comes thru in the photo.
I think more and more the trend is to see how the pose can serve the practitioner, rather than the other way around. Yoga is a ever changing system, rather than a written-in-stone dictate. You keep those feet hip distance apart!
Great post! I feel a kindred spirit with you
Lately I’ve been using the basic 20 poses outlined in Mohan’s book, Yoga for Body, Breath, and Mind. With adaptations to suit myself or students. Less really can be more!
Ohhh great post – and btw did you catch the last issue of Yoga Journal? In it they had photos and stories of all different warriors from different traditions.. it was amazing how they all looked so dissimilar to one another, but each had their own benefits.
I love yoga precisely because it’s not about perfect poses, but honouring where you are at any given time. x
There is no right or wrong way about yoga. I always tell my students to do what feels right. Listen to your body, honor your body, and give it exactly what it wants.