I am a natural forwad bender. I just got that set of genes in the lottery. Forwards, I am circus-monkey flexible. My head touches the ground in downward dog.
On a bad day in paschimottanasana (seated forward bend) I can bind my wrists.
On a good day, I can hold onto an elbow. It’s freaky, man.
The backbending? Not so much. All that forward bending, combined with non-backbending genes and sitting at a desk all day had led to a weak back that didn’t like arching. I’ve talked about the physical structures that influence what we can do before, and also about my journey into backbending.
As Kerry and I have been doing the preparation for our Unstuck Workshops (which are both sold out!!!), I’ve been thinking a great deal about how much emotional blockage I always had against doing backbends. Because I wasn’t good at them.
And this brings up a whole lot of stuff for me. I am competitive. Unhealthily so. I HATED being second in my year at school. I wanted to be the smartest kid. Nothing else would do. I refused to play Monopoly because I detested losing. I just didn’t compete in things I wasn’t good at.
Yes, I know. Not pretty. Not pretty at all. So, physical limitations aside, I spent a lot of time getting Very Good at the Ashtanga Primary Series. I could do some seriously flashy shit. But I still had a weak back because I still wasn’t doing those poses that would strenghten my back but that I wasn’t good at. Baby cobra, for example. Locust. Bridge.
Then I hurt my SI joints (the joints where your spine connects to your pelvis) and those poses were just about all I could do. I had to face up to my deep belief that if I wasn’t the best at something, I wasn’t good enough. Well, well, well.
No wonder I didn’t want to bend backwards. It brought me up against myself, and forced me to look. It was uncomfortable but I’m glad I did, even though it was only because I was FORCED to. I have a strong back now. Funnily enough, I don’t do as much flashy yoga, on account of it dislocates my SI Joints.
I am still not the best at backbends. But now I don’t care. I like them! They open my chest and make me feel strong. I’ve come a long way, baby.
I would really, really like to know if you have had a similar experience: not with a pose that is physically inappropriate for you, but with one you didn’t like for other reasons. Did you work through those blocks? Are you still battling? What emotional stuff does it bring up for you?
If you don’t want to comment in public, I would love an email: nadine(at)nadinefawell(dot)net.
Related articles
- SI Joint Pain and Yoga (yogawithnadine.com)
- Does doing flashy sh*t give the wrong impression? (yogawithnadine.com)
- My body doesn’t bend right for yoga (recovering yogi.com)
Moving from Stability: Understanding the Pelvis in Posture (Online workshop)
Myinsens
Curvy Yoga by Anna Guest-Jelley
i haven’t done a lot of yoga however have done a couple of 3-month stints of bikram
one of the hardest poses for me was always camel. until i realised that i had nothing to be afraid of. and my heart cracked wide open.
forward bends. not so easy for me. my jaw dropped looking at the photographs. something for me to aspire to (one day) perhaps….!
Oh, Leonie, I feel ya on camel pose. It’s really rather a scary pose. Backbends. Not my friends. Etc.
Well, ONCE they weren’t my friends, anyway. Now, we have tea and laugh about old times.
It’s funny how deep and intimate the mind-body link is. How many times I need reminding of that. Like, every day.
Gosh, where to start. My favourite poses ever are the sun salutation A & B sequence. I actually feel a bit gipped when a teacher doesn’t do sun salutations in a class. Rare, but still. Backbends are my “urgh” poses. I am always in awe of people who can get into a wheel but my sucky upper body strength and simply my skeletal structure (my arms refuse to go straight and turn out in downward dog) cause me hassle and a bit of pain. I am trying to work on it though but I do find that I try to skip out on backbends too often because they make me feel like crying. I get really emotional about it. I do understand that practice, practice, practice will help me overcome the fear and emotions that come up and I know that it’ll just happen. Like when I was sitting at home one day and said right, I am going to do headstand now…and I did. It helps to have Ganesha in the room on those days.
Ah, this is good stuff. Stuff I can use, and think about. Thanks girls!
Handstand, handstand and handstand. Even the IDEA of kicking up against the wall used to be able to reduce me to tears. It wasn’t about the pose, it was completely about my self-image, about the geeky girl who never got picked for the sports teams, couldn’t dance or do gymnastics. I used to watch those ‘cool’ girls doing cartwheels as if it were the easiest thing in the world. But all I felt was fear.
It took a great deal of searching and work to overcome my fear of falling, because that’s what it was that could reduce me to tears.
Funny thing is, now I can easily kick up against a wall and you know what? I don’t care at all anymore.
I came through the fear and that is what matters, not the pose itself.
Thanks for the advice, Nadine! I was starting to think it was a physical, not psychological, problem. I’m happy to stick with those nice, strength backbends – upwards dog is one of my faves.
I am learning to live with the fact I will never do the “flashy” poses. I could, possibly, if I practised like a crazy thing for years and years, do some of them. But what I believe is that those poses probably wouldn’t be good for my body. I’ve come to realise my body needs firm but gentle attention
I have no flexibility anywhere, except for my arms. I can bind fairly well.
I love standing poses – they make me feel like a strong goddess. I love forward bends for the peace and tranquility they bring me. Twists make me and my lower back happy.
Backwards bend … hmmmm. I get what I can only describe as panic – physical, mental and emotional panic – when I do backbends. Just the thought of going into, say, camel pose gives me severe nausea. I don’t if it’s “in my head” or if it’s a physical problem. Any idea, knowledgeable Yoga ladies?
My backbends these days are confined to upward facing dog, sphinx, cobra – anything that doesn’t involve dropping my head backwards.
You know, Anne-Marie, It sounds like the head-dropping dizziness might be a homeostasis problem, that is, your blood pressure is going all loopy when you take your head back. So it may well be physical. I think the backbends you are doing sound better anyway: they are strength poses rather than traction poses like camel. Traction poses use gravity and are more likely to produce injury, so ha!
This is a great topic – I think I could probably write enough to fill a book (aaah…the elusive book topic I have been searching for?!). Isn’t it great that we have our yoga practice – our place to learn, to try, to explore, to observe… so that when we step off our mats and into our lives we can use what we’ve discovered in everything else that we do.
Have a great weekend – I’m off to a yoga workshop – 3 full days of yoga. No better way to spend a wet wintery weekend.
Blessings
x
Hi Nadine,
Such a great topic. Its been something I really struggle with.
I’ve been doing my teachers training, and in a convoluted fashion, this has been my biggest challenge.
Confession time…
I am not great at asana. I love it and I feel great when I practice it properly, but as a proper type a, it hard to not notice that no matter how often i practise, i don’t do flashy beautiful poses. I’m not GOOD at it.
During my training, which i’m still doing, its been so hard to feel good enough to be a teacher, despite an inabilty to do perfect beautiful poses.
Its hard, but I like to think I’m working on it and unlike an impossible deep backbend, I’ll improve!
Thanks for the food for thought!
X
Lots of food for thought for me, thanks you guys! Des, I suspect your poses are beautiful and you just don’t realise it: they were even when I knew you. You are going to be a wonderful teacher!
Tanja, very interesting: I battled with halasana too, karma pidasana was worse: it used to make me feel like I was suffocating. Can’t wait to see you at the workshop!
Svasti: you sound pretty balanced to me, all of us women battle with upper body strength! See YOU at the workshop too!
Jenn: same thing for me, it’s why I am not an Ashtangi anymore. I find that I have to keep my back and glutes strong and my psoas and quads loose if I want a pain-free back. All that wrapping and binding isn’t my friend
I find your comments about the Ashtanga Primary series interesting. I don’t have much experience with the Ashtanga series specifically. However over the past 3 months we have been working through the standing poses and a portion of the primary series in my teacher training program. I have very mixed feelings about the series because while all the forward folding is generally pretty easy for me, it also seems to really aggrivate my sciatic/SI issue. I really notice the lack of deeper hip flexor work that I normally include in my practice. By the end of a training weekend lately I usually leave feeling worse, and less balanced physically, than when we started. While I understand and appreciate the theory and energetic harmony of the series, it doesn’t seem to fit my body at this time. (Not to mention I can’t do a jump through to save my life!) For me it has been a reminder that no matter how much we would like it to be different, even in yoga there is no ONE best way that meets everyones needs.
I am not a natural anything. But hey ho and c’est la via and all that. The thing I love about yoga is it doesn’t matter that I have ludicrously long legs and a body so short you wonder how my organs fit in, it doesn’t matter that that my hands will never go flat on the floor in uttanasana, it doesn’t matter that my spine is wiggly or my wrists don’t bend, or that I can’t ever do chaturanga again because if I dislocate my shoulder one more time it will be pinned together. It doesn’t matter that my headstand falls over to one side because yoga is so much more than that. And it was when I had that Eureka moment, when I realised that it wasn’t about perfection of asana, but about living my life in accordance with my true self rather than who I think I *should” be, that life in general became so much easier.
I used to cry at the mention of handstands, at the frustration of having to do what I used to perceive as childish modifications. Now I think “ah f*** it” and laugh at myself, because life is too short to do anything else.
And it was this yoga that taught me that. It took years, but I got there
(PS I love Trikonasana, I hate beyond all measure any form of bow pose)
Rachel, you make me giggle! Your poses are gorgeous. They may not be classical, but who cares? We both love Ugly Yoga anyway. Oh, and the freakishly long legs? How I would have killed for them when I was a teenager…
Hi Nadine,
Thoughtful topic. There’s value in reflecting on the poses we avoid. The pose that I avoid is halasana, as I have some fear associated with dropping my legs down all the way to the ground in that pose (feels unsafe).
A yoga teacher noticed that I was hesitant to get into this pose and helped me get into the full pose in class. That felt quite good, the guidance really helped me get there! Admittedly I could benefit from some extra practice with this pose, thanks for bringing this to mind.
See you at the unstuck workshop
Hah! My forward bends are quite bendy, but then my rather prominent ‘lady lumps’ actually restrict how far forward I can bend. So…. prasarita padottanasana is another story though. I rock that one.
And yeah, I love a good back bend.
Poses that rely on my upper body strength have always been a weakness, although they are improving over more and more (thank goodness). Like you, I think I didn’t practice them because I thought I was weak, and as a result, never developed my upper body strength as well as I could have.
And like you and Kathleen said… physical realities like this do seem to reflect in the way I relate to life. Which is no surprise with the whole thing with the mind-body really being “one”. Its just that we generally forget this, but luckily yoga shows us the reality as it actually is!
Hi Nadine, the thing I love about yoga is how it almost directly reflects life i.e. how our bodies are mirrors for ourselves, our personalities, our struggles, our strengths and weaknesses.
I’ve always had a very flexible bendy body – I can do a lot of yoga poses quite easily simply because my body is naturally supple – and most ‘non-yogi’s’ probably think yoga is ‘easy’ for me. The thing is I struggle with the poses that require strength and balance – e.g. all those lovely bird poses – I am working on these and have come a long way but I will always find these poses challenging.
So the thing I have learnt during my more than 10 years of yoga is that we cannot rely on our flexibility – it needs to be balanced with strength and awareness – otherwise we end up injuring ourselves.
As on my mat, so in my life, I tend to be a ‘flexible’ person – I ‘bend over backwards’ for other people, I compromise, twist and turn to ‘keep the peace’ and make other people happy. But yoga has taught me that in order to take care of myself, I need to be strong, & to find a balance between this flexibility and my innate power, so that I don’t lose touch with who I am.
It’s a lifelong challenge for me, but I am so grateful to have my yoga practice which reminds me daily that it is possible to find that point of stability and poise, even if only momentarily. Each fleeting glimpse reminds me of what I can achieve, both on and off the mat.
xx
You know, Kathleen, these tendencies show up in my life too: I will (or at least have in the past more than now) bow down to any impositions made on me, fold myself under any requests, prostrate my needs before those of others. It’s only as I’ve gotten stronger that I am slowly starting to learn to say no, to put myself first.
Awesome comment, thank you xx