February 23, 2024
Avoidance
Elizabeth Brass
Certified Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher & Yoga Therapist (IAYT)
It's the small progressions in ourselves that often go unseen.
By not recognizing our own progress, it's easy to become frustrated.
The positive changes in our posture, in our energy, in our outlook over time are impossible to measure.
Because we can't measure the transformations that occur in us from our yoga practice, they go under valued.
Last week, a yoga student said to me, “it's hard to be weak, Elizabeth.” He's been dealing with tremendous and varied pain in his body, some understandable (back pain from sitting at a desk too long) and some not so understandable (soreness around his ribs, shooting pain in arms and legs). He is consulting doctors to find out what could be the source of his problems and, in the meantime, searching for relief from the pain and improvement in his energy.
Chronic pain debilitates us. When I broke my ankle, I knew what the problem was, but the ongoing pain and unknowing about the healing process stressed me out. The efforts to keep life moving along as “normal' as possible, at times, felt like a Herculean effort. I remember teaching yoga the day after the accident and searching for ways to practice with a blue, swollen, and bandaged foot. Thankfully, we practice inversions in yoga!
When we're well, we often forget about our body, and enjoy testing it's limits. The freedom to run to catch a bus or walk for hours feels natural, right, and uplifting. Then we can easily separate from our bodies by staying up all night and still showing up to work the next day. We can eat and drink whatever we like and feel fresh and ready to go afterwards. But sometimes, panic or denial sets in when our basic maneuvering of life is changed or compromised. Like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, we keep living how we know, even when it's not working anymore. Because, as my student said, “it's hard to be weak.”
This is where and when our yoga practice can support us, literally. Finding asanas and pranayama techniques that soothe our pain and nerves. Sometimes we're at a total loss at what to do. We wonder if yoga will really make a difference. The Yoga Sutras tell us that doubt, saṃśaya, is one of the nine obstacles, antarāyas, to practice. Chronic pain not only wears us out, but it also causes us to doubt what to do to find help. Staying close to our yoga community strengthens our bond to yoga and our social network and these ties will uplift us when we're feeling low.
It may seem indulgent and is expensive to keep going to yoga class over the years. As one of my teachers said to me many years ago, “you either pay now or you pay later.” Patanjali said centuries ago, in sutra 2.16:
The pains which are yet to come can be and are to be avoided – heyaṃ duḥkham-anāgatam
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