Sometimes we can see that an asana that should bring us a particular benefit does not work for us. To understand why it happens and achieve results we must understand that each body is unique.
When you practice an asana to relieve a certain tension it may not work for you or it may even worsen the problem. In many cases the problem is that we do not spend enough time before performing the movement to observe our body.
Discover the course Initiation to Yoga + 56 postures of Yoga of School Body.
WHY DOES YOGA SOMETIMES NOT WORK?
If you like cooking it will have happened to you that with the same recipe one day you had a fluffy and moist cake and another day it barely rose an inch. And when you get it to always be delicious, it is because you have learned to adjust temperatures, amounts of liquid and rest times depending on the season of the year, the size of the eggs or the mold you use. There are thousands of details that the recipe does not cover, that you cannot control and that will never be the same.
With the recipes regarding body work happens exactly the same. To pretend that an asana, or a set of them, rearranges bodily tensions in the same way for everyone and at all times implies accepting two things that are false: that all bodies are equal and that the body itself is always in the same conditions.
However excellent the asana is as a proposal to relieve this or that tension, if we perform it accepting these two false assumptions, there is a good chance that the practice will not give the expected result. Or it can even cause the opposite effect, adding one tension on another.
- If I have to make an effort to sit, the beneficial head twists will be a torture that will increase the lumbar tension that I am already doing without even having moved a finger.
- If I have to endure a pain in my knee to sit as I am expected to, excellent spinal push-ups will be another torture that will increase my tension in the groin and under the belly. And so, we could go on.
The posture or movement that is not part of our daily repertoire allows us to make evident the discomfort or tensions that we have managed to silence in our day to day.
Therefore, if we want to use body technique as a means of self-knowledge it is important to be careful not to fall into the automatism that usually appears when technical improvement is reached.
HOW TO MAKE THE POSTURE MORE BENEFICIAL
Just as to get a good cake we have to understand the recipe and know the conditions of all the ingredients to introduce the necessary adjustments.
The understanding of the recipe will be acquired as you make it and observing its effects: during the execution of the asana and at the end of it. But to know the conditions of all the ingredients it is essential that you take advantage of the time before starting.
The time you spend finding your posture of stability to initiate any movement will be the key to obtaining the benefits that the asana can offer you. And the posture of stability will depend on how the body is at that moment and the environment in which you practice.
Your fabrics will not be the same on a cold day as in the middle of summer. The posture that your feet will need to adopt to keep you balanced will not be the same if you practice in a room than on the beach. You will not sit the same the day you have rested as the day you cannot with your soul.
WHAT TO DO BEFORE STARTING THE YOGA SESSION
In a yoga session, the execution time of an asana is as important as the time between them. But the sacred time is that of the beginning.
What differentiates any physical exercise from a yoga practice is that yoga seeks to exercise at the same time the body and the awareness we have of it and its links with the environment.
When the yoga session you attend is focused on the latter, you will notice that the comments of the facilitator seek to draw your attention to different aspects of your movement, posture and breathing. And you will listen to them not only during the execution of the asana and when changing from one position to another, they will also invite you to observe yourself before the start of it.
And we commented the other day in class, that this habit transferred to our daily lives makes a difference. How many pinches we could avoid if before lifting a weight we made sure to have our feet firmly on the ground and our abdomen available for movement!
- Do not be in a hurry to start the execution of the asana.
- Make the adjustments you need to feel well supported on the floor and supported effortlessly in the starting position.
- Wait for your breathing to be calm and wide before starting the movement.