Aah, the question the plagues us in yoga, and life in general. Yogis of all levels frequently ask it. It’s a question that I mostly love, but also, a little bit, not so much love: “Am I doing this right?”
looking to the heavens for an answer? (this picture will have relevance later, at least!)
I want to address this question early on in this blog series because with all of these little tips being thrown your way, you’re bound to be concerned. But before I ultimately get to my short answer, please bear with me while I rationalize its validity in this longer than usual post.
My love/'not so much love' relationship with this question
I love this question because I think it’s great that my students are inquisitive, and want to be aware of themselves. It shows me that they are really keen on learning, and that they value/trust my views. What more could a teacher ask for?
But, what does “right” even mean?
Our bodies and minds are all so individually different in terms of mechanical capability and dynamic ability. Therefore, the expression of, and gains from, a given posture will vary greatly from person to person, and from one minute to the next. As such, there is no singular way of doing things “right”.
Furthermore, in yoga, like life in general, there are so many little things that one can always take into account for any given task. If we were incessantly concerned with attaining ultimate correctness in every way at every moment, we would lose the ability to accomplish anything at all. We'd lose the forest for the trees. There is value to harnessing the knowledge and knowhow you’ve accumulated up to a given point in time, trusting in that, and simply being/doing.
As such, I think that yoga shouldn’t be about worrying whether or not you’re doing it according to a given interpretation of the meaning of “right”. So long as you’re doing things safely, hatha yoga should be about consuming time and space with your body and mind as one; being present in yourself and mindful in the moment, which should hopefully manifest in a release from worry, stress, and judgement (including personal) during that span of time – along with the inextricable bonus of improved physical health and fitness.
The key is “so long as you’re doing things safely”.
As much as there isn’t a universal “right” way of doing things, there is, certainly, sometimes, a wrong way. To know this requires knowledge of yourself as well as yoga and anatomy. An outsider can help with the latter, as I try to contribute with this blog and in my teaching, but only you can ever possess the requisite knowledge of self. Even if I obtained the powers of x-ray vision and mind-reading, I could never be part of the singular integrated sensing unit with endless data storage that is you, to be able to answer this question for you (and yes, I am probably capable of making the naturalness of being human sound more robotic).
So, if I am not part of the sensing circuitry, nor have access to the totality of the data storage, how can I as an outsider truly provide the answer to whether something is correct or incorrect? I can give pointers to help you understand for yourself, but that’s all.
All that being said, the question remains totally valid, and mostly loved: “am I doing this right?”
Clearly, my approach to viewing this simple question is pretty complex. But a complex answer doesn’t tend to be very helpful; hence, the whole concept behind this blog: digestible bite sized bits of yoga...
So, my simple answer [finally] is:
“Does it hurt?”
Close your eyes (figuratively or actually), ignore the teacher’s and your own cues and just pay attention to your body. Trust yourself, relinquish the control of your actively directing thought process, and listen to what you (i.e. your body/implicit mind) is saying. Is it saying “hellooooo, I don’t move that way!”? If not, then as a rule of thumb, keep on keeping on, and over time your body and mind will open and make space for more goodness. Simple as that.
But! If your body/mind is getting frustrated or angry, or it feels like your bones are just not built that way – then listen! Adjust your position according to what your body is saying and how you feel, not what you think.
However, a major challenge is having the ability to listen to your body and hear what it has to say.
And in such a task, the beginner’s advantage is the experienced yogi’s disadvantage, and vice versa.
Beginner’s advantage/Experienced disadvantage:
More experienced yogis have had years of reinforced training, to “know” that:
“my body should move this way in this posture. That’s what I’ve always learned. I’m just not there yet so I will keep on pushing until I do”
But the fact is [for example] that the difference between Warrior I and Warrior II is not merely twisting your hips (OUCH!!), no matter how many instructors simplify it down to that and assure you that it’s true. Or maybe your hip bones or ankle joints just aren’t shaped the same way as your teacher’s or neighbour’s or Instagram yogi’s (99.9% chance), and your skeleton doesn’t move in that exact way. Or, the usual angle seen of a particular posture appears to show one thing isn’t actually necessarily so.
Take Tree pose, for example: from the angles we normally see this pose (i.e. front and back), an experienced practitioner has a solid leg holding even hips that are so open, that the knee extends beautifully out in line with the hips. Well… that’s how it appears anyways, because we always only ever see it from one angle.
In reality, a side view (see below) of the same posture shows that our hip bones have limits, and structurally, no one (or perhaps very few) can physically keep their hips even to the front while opening the femur 90 degrees to the side – our skeletons are simply not created that way. Just as I noted in my first blog post, reality isn’t necessarily what it seems. But because your typical yogi never sees (or shows) this shift in perspective, they will often try to bring their knee in line with their outer hip – and contort their bodies in a compensatory way to get it there, which really doesn’t provide much benefit physically, and is just candy for the ego.
So, to really listen to their body, the experienced yogi has to wade through years of the assumed, the good, the bad, the irrelevant, and the inspiring to be able to re-learn what their body says, rather than what they want their body to say, what they say their body says, or what someone else says their body should say.
Lucky for beginners, they don’t have to clear through those years of conditioning; they have a clean slate: everything is confusion :p
Beginner’s disadvantage/Experienced advantage:
However, that same advantageous clean slate is ultimately also the beginner’s disadvantage. They’ve just begun the somewhat steep learning curve of exploring their bodies from the inside out. It’s hard to listen to, and moreover be in tune with, your body whilst getting to know it.
For beginners, there is still a need for the brain to command muscles to move. There’s a concerted focus to use the breath in concert with movement, and still learning the basic shapes of different yoga postures and how your own body parts move to get there. The experienced folks have these aspects more ingrained, which, as we saw, has the snake biting its tail, leading us back into a bit of a conundrum.
In conclusion…
This is why I mostly love this question. It represents inquiry and gets us out of that cyclical path where in trying to connect with ourselves, it becomes increasingly more difficult to do so. Which, incidentally, brings me full circle again, because this is the crux of why I do this blog, and why I teach in general: to help people find their own answers to this question.
So, continue to inquire, but also don’t get too worked up in the details. Take in the knowledge, put it in a compartment in your head, apply it bit by bit when you’re able to, trust yourself, and be kind and in tune with your body.
Thanks for reading to the end of this longer post!
Namaste,
Leah