Do what’s right for you when it comes to yoga, exercise and using your body.
I am going to rant about this idea of perfect shapes in any exercise. I see people do some really wacky and sometimes dangerous things in yoga. Let me keep the focus on myself for a minute. When I first started doing yoga, I tried so hard to do these super fancy and really hard yoga poses. When I would finally accomplish a new pose, I would get all these accolades and feel so good about myself. As I started getting older, I could feel how it was negatively effecting my body. It was about this time in my life I decided to do the yoga teacher training to learn more. I was so lucky because the person running the program was and is an anatomy master. I started following him around to his other classes, especially this class at the Y where he taught a class that had 25 year olds and 80 year olds in the same class. I would watch so carefully as he helped different people with very different wants and needs. I could see how he masterfully helped people of all ages do what was right for their bodies and their bodies alone. It was at this time, I knew that changing my yoga practice and for that matter everything I do with my body was going to be different. I realized that some of these so called fancy yoga poses were actually hurting me and that all I really wanted was to feel good in my body with as little aches and pains as possible.
It became my mission statement for myself, that my goal was to live in a pain free, mobile, strong body. I write about it all the time that anything physical is not a one size fits all. I think we live in a society that praises hard work and while that is a good thing for the most part, when speaking of physical endeavors that is not always a good thing. I do what’s right for me and that changes day to day. I follow my bodies cues and do what’s right for me and me alone. I use a combination of different healing modalities including physical therapy.
Do what’s right for you!