As I set out to write this article, I believed that I had some vital information to impart about awareness/mindfulness and the truth that yoga doesn’t or shouldn’t injure practitioners. I adhere to the principles of the first yama of ahimsa — non-violence (to self) and the second yama of satya — truth (to self). For twenty years, these have kept me in good stead with my practice. I would rather go to the edge than over it — and I encourage that inner dialogue in my students. Each of us inhabits our own individual temple of the material world, and its impact differs on our stories, memories and everyday existences.
Asana is the limb of yoga that cleanses and purifies our nervous system — the nadis in Ayurvedic medicine. It is only one facet of a vast body of knowledge. I engage my students with creative variations, options for props and the openness to using them that engenders safe practice in the studio. I encourage students, throughout the class, to check in with their breath, their energy, and to listen to the feelings in their bodies openly and without judgments, self-compassionately. As a teacher, I work on not expecting my students to look like me, or any picture I’ve/they’ve ever seen. Feel the pose, I exhort. Students arrive to class with their lives inscribed on them, and my work is to open them to their own bodies, to listen and learn from their greatest teacher — themselves.
As my own teacher, in my self- practice, I learn how Herculean a task I’ve set them! My ego, my envies and desires arise to contort me into strange injuries — bent back, broken fingers, a tinge between my ribs. I thought that I had managed to learn an important lesson from them — but what I was practicing, at the moment of injury, was not actually yoga, only an over-flexible gesture. I practice true yoga when my mind, body and spirit find union and alignment. In injury, the monkey mind exits stage left to have a conversation with a memory, or colour or the taxman. Some complacency had, perhaps, set in, throwing my hands under my feet while my little finger curled back unnoticed. Yes, these incidents threw me deeper into my practice, into my inner discourse. So, in a gradual blossoming, I developed an even greater understanding of the sequences, of what my body needs each day, what I can and cannot do.
However, after my daughter’s birth, my handstand continued to elude me — though I have no problem in other inversions. I could bear my weight for a few breaths — feel the alignment, but still battled to hold for longer. Within the last few months, after an incredible training, my confidence built to the point where I found myself slipping more easily from my toes to my hands — sensing the hold of the core and capturing minutes in it, not seconds. I had passed a threshold. You know it when it happens, some inner understanding shifts, the lines hold true.
Maybe it was the pure gestures of a ten-year-old practicing her handstand every five minutes? The ten-year-old in me decided to practice in a narrow passage between priceless antiques in my mother’s house. Certainly my attitude held a sense of complacency, a hubris that had been building over time. The nearly fifty-year-old landed abruptly, off a bit, caught on the sticky mat. Just like that, a big toe, the stalwart of my skeleton, cracks. My rapid fire walk diminished, my steps hobbled, as I attempt to control the damage, timid to reveal its source as others will scoff — they often do — roll their eyes at this yoga thing.
Do I stop there? No. I keep on with a small practice until I decide to try again, with a broken toe. (Am I ten or five?) I take the weight on my other foot, which never takes weight, and sprain my ankle. Now, one foot with a sprained ankle, a broken toe in the other. I meditate with both my feet raised and hope that I’ve learned the lesson.
In yoga, as in many aspects of our lives, we find ourselves our own worst enemies. We undermine ourselves, belittle, or ignore what we deem most important. Today, my practice changed, today yoga taught me another lesson, took me into the limbs. Today, each step reminds me of my intention to stay mindful and aware, grounded and compassionate. Without pain or suffering.
Heidi Joffe