Here’s an asana tip that I sometimes give:
Stay in the pose a little longer than you want to.
Granted, there are sequences wherein we focus more on the flow and smoothness from one shape to another and we don’t hold each pose for very long. Those instances aside, I often like to hold a pose for longer than I am entirely comfortable doing. There is too much to discover in that uncomfortable, perhaps shaky, or awkward zone, I don’t want to miss that opportunity.
Plus, my body feels better after a session like that, probably because I have put some stresses on my structure and system. I’m talking about the good kind of stress, the kind without which we don’t get any stronger and perhaps even get progressively more frail. This is true at the cellular level of the bones, for example.
Contrary to the typical image we probably have of a bone – white, dried out, brittle and frankly non-living – living bones are teeming with activity. Arteries, veins, and nerves run through them; they are suffused with moisture (hopefully); they have different types of cells, which move around, divide, secrete important stuff, and create more bone cells; and they are more bendy than we might imagine, responding to that bending by getting thicker and stronger in that specific area.
My good old Anatomy and Physiology book concisely explains Wolf’s Law, which says
“A bone grows or remodels in response to the demands placed on it.”
(Elaine N. Marieb and Katie Hoehn, Human Anatomy and Physiology, Ninth Edition, p. 188.)
So while you are doing your weight-bearing exercise that your doctor said was good for preventing osteoporosis in older age, your bones are busy! And weight-bearing exercise does include the type of yoga that we do in our classes, don’t be fooled by the fact that we aren’t lifting weights! Our own body weight and gravity can do the trick, which you might feel if you are holding a warrior pose, for example. (If you are curious what else counts as weight-bearing exercise, a quick internet search of something like “what counts as weight-bearing exercise” will give you an idea.)
So back to the idea of staying in a pose a little longer than you want to. Like any other tip I could give, this is a guideline, not a rule to be followed at all times. If you experience sharp pain, for example, you should probably come out of the pose, especially if it doesn’t pass quickly. And even though your bones do benefit, it doesn’t improve your overall experience to just check out during the latter (harder) part of your time in the pose, as you might imagine a yoga teacher would say.
One approach that helps me mentally stay with a pose is to adjust my internal language and thought. When I notice myself thinking “I’ve got to hold this pose for longer,” or “I don’t like being in this pose,” I try to bring in alternate thoughts. I literally say different words in my head, like “I’m staying with this pose for a bit longer, or “I’m getting stronger as I practice this pose.”
I really appreciate that subtlety of “staying with” rather than “staying in” a pose. Not that I won’t ever say the latter, but I do notice that my attention does something different when I encourage myself to stay with something. I feel less constrained than when I think I’m “in” it.
Also, I could make the nuanced shift from “being in” a shape to “working within” the shape. Does that feel any different to you? We could further change the language to say “playing within the shape.” And there are myriad other ways we might shift the language, which probably all work in different ways for different people.
On a slightly larger scale, I have been experimenting with how long to stay with certain sequences over the weeks and months. I try not to bore you with doing too much of the same stuff in classes every week. At the same time, it is really important to stay with challenges over a longer span of time, which is to say return to them again and again, which sometimes feels like spending longer in a pose than you might want because you start to get bored with it.
Although I will continue to change things up for you week-to-week and month-to-month, you might notice that sequences stick around longer than before, because I am experimenting with this idea of doing something past the point of boredom. Here’s hoping that the boredom isn’t mind-numbing, just a little bit uncomfortable. Because often those are indicators that we are on the cusp of interesting discoveries, or perhaps a “leveling up” of our skills.
New/different and old/revisited collections of poses will be sprinkled in as well, but let’s see what repetition and boredom can teach us too.