It's also a good chance for meditation and mental discipline. Over the years I've learned a lot of tidbits from teachers about how to approach the Mental Game of Yoga. One of the best was Geoffrey, who at different times gave me these useful slogans:
-
1. Don't blow past it.
Sometimes it's easy to push your limb past a tight spot into a more comfortable one that looks "more stretched." But the value of the training is in that tight feeling. And sometimes it's possible to go "past" that place, into a pose that actually uses different muscles—hence, the ones that I felt, which were crying in pain, become relaxed. In each pose, I need to find the place where I, personally, can work usefully, without being too comfortable. This goes hand in hand with that motto that yoga teachers are constantly beating us with, "Don't try to look cool. Nobody cares." It's true! Nobody cares. Yoga seems to have a different culture than the martial arts, where there is an unacknowledged premium placed on looking tough.
- Don't do the pose with your face.
We novices have a pernicious tendency, in yoga, to screw up our faces in pain. Somehow, our bodies seem to think that squinting and grimacing and and tensing our neck muscles will allow us to get an extra inch of stretch, or to endure it longer. It doesn't help, of course! Part of yoga's training is to help us relax our minds, even in difficult circumstances—a skill that I reckon will come in useful if I ever have to run a marathon, or escape from prison, or face a Bond villain's evil contraptions.
There are several things built into yoga practice that aim to take us out of our bee-swarming heads—to relax our minds—and be more conscious of our bodies: there's the injunction to breath constantly and smoothly, there's the constant dropping of the head and neck in poses where seemingly every other muscle in the body is fully engaged, and there's this lovely slogan: Don't do the pose with your face.