Oftentimes, pain and unease are invitations to investigate and change a pattern. Developing the skill set and the resolve to notice and change said pattern is a process. This is where my path to yoga teacher training began.
I had been experiencing pain in particular yoga poses and feeling generally “stuck” in my body. Thankfully, I had a teacher who cared enough to mention an upcoming open house for yoga teacher training. She knew my love for the practice and indicated that her Teacher, Lauren Toolin, was particularly skillful in teaching to the individual…that she’d work with me to co-create a therapeutic and sustainable practice.
I went for it. In the early months of training, Lauren helped me understand how scoliosis impacted my experience of yoga asanas. With her guidance and lessons gleaned from my evolving home practice, I learned how to vary poses rather than avoid or force my way through them. I learned to change the length of holds and use props within postures to challenge and support the shape of my spine and re-train the patterning of my muscles. I learned to breathe diaphragmatically and direct my breath to create space where there was restriction. As the training progressed, I would expand my capacity for discernment: Is this painful or uncomfortable? Can I manage this intensity or does something need to shift? I’d never before been so in-tune to receiving the innate intelligence of the body. To inquire, to listen and to know what to do-what an empowered place to be.
As I worked with my Teacher to expand my ability to observe, feel, and adjust I began to stand taller, carry myself more comfortably and inhabit the space around me more fully. Physical strength and structural integrity became complements to my growing strength of character and personal authenticity.
This is what unfolds during yoga sadhana: An increase in sensitivity allows us to see clearly what IS and a subsequent unlearning or outgrowing and reworking of thought and habit patterns ensues. We employ our increased objectivity to enliven our strengths and soften the pull of our asymmetries, misalignments, imbalances, and misperceptions-starting with the physical body and working our way inward. At the center, one finds her backbone, her immutable truth, a deep trust in connection to an internal pillar of support that keeps her ahead of the curve.