Your Yoga Asana Practice Is A Balance Of Mobility And Strength
I often hear from people new to asana admit that they are not flexible. They may do this with a self-deprecating air, a wink and a smile. They may do this, as though confessing a sin. You’re not a bad student if you’re not flexible.
Yoga asana = flexibility is one of the most sticky equations that people hold, and it’s no surprise when yoga in the west has been imprinted in our minds as contortionist dance fitness. I do not blame or shame new students for having this understanding because it is the teachers, the studios, and the corporations that make money from selling yoga as a lifestyle that should be accountable for this misconception. The body is beautiful and asanas are deeply inspiring, but it it the emphasis and valuing of this above all else that feels like something's been lost.
As a yoga asana teacher, a lot of what I love about asana is body liberation. With asana, I see my body as a teacher and a friend, not as a machine. With asana, I became mesmerized with the beauty of my body. My body is beautiful, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My eye. When I see how asana is used online to celebrate one type of body and one type of shape that both adhere to patriarchal constructs of gender and white supremacist standards of beauty, it is a topsy-turvy interpretation of what I love about asana.
You Do Not Have To Be Flexible To Practice Asana
When I encounter students who say that they are not flexible, I like to share my stance that asana is more about strength and mobility. Mobility would be a more practical goal of physical health to pursue than flexibility. With flexibility, you can do full splits but how practical is that? In our daily lives, it would be better to improve our mobility (strength of our range of motion) so that we know how to pick up a bag of heavy groceries without our back giving out!
Ustrasana or camel pose is an example of why flexibility isn’t all that we’re working with.
It can be easy for naturally flexible students to rely upon a bendy spine, and forget about their legs or gluteal muscles. You see this in Ustrasana when their hips start to move back the minute that they curve their upper body back so that they can place their hands on the heels of their feet.
A common instruction teachers will provide is to bring the hips forward, aligned above the knees.
What is happening here is that we are relying upon our spine to do the work but we should be also using our quadricep muscles and our gluteal muscles to help us. Generally speaking, when we activate these areas of our body, it helps to stabilize us so that we can stay in this backbend in a posture full of ease and comfort.
Sthira Sukamasanam: Asana Is A Posture That Is Steady And Full of Ease For Your Body
Another way to understand why yoga is more about strength and mobility is by looking to what Patanjali says in Yoga Sutra 2.46:
स्थिरसुखम् आसनम् ॥ २.४६॥
Sthira sukhamasanam
Asana is a steady, comfortable posture. - translation by Sri Swami Satchidanana
Sthira = steady, stable.
Sukham = comfortable, happy, prsperous, easiness, pleasantly.
Asanam = Posture, presence, sitting without interruption.
This is one of the few sutras in the Yoga Sutras that is devoted to asana, and to me, it shows how our asana practice should be a balance of mobility and strength. Satchidananda uses a few examples to explain this sutra, and I enjoy his commentary on this sutra here: “What we need is the strength of steel with steel’s flexibility… the body must be so supple it can bend any way you want it to.”
It’s our strength that allows us to bend.
And what we are looking for in an asana is not the same cookie cutter shape but a posture that brings us comfort and steadiness - so any pose that gives you this is an asana.
Why Is Asana Defined As A Seat Of Comfort And Ease In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras?
We can look at the goal of yoga. The goal of yoga was not wellness or mental health. It is samadhi - a state of realizing and experiencing your true nature. Yoga is the cessation of the mental fluctuations that occurs during dhyana, or the limb of yoga that correlates to what we call meditation. When we concentrate and focus our mind, we can come into the state of samadhi.
But it is hard to sit in a meditative seat when the body is bloated, tired, or cranky. So, Hatha Yoga was birthed. The earliest hatha yoga texts come from the 11th and 12th centuries, and it is a continuation of yogic traditions that date back to the 2nd century BCE. Hatha yoga advocates believe that we should practice asana, along with other energetic cleansing practices, first so that we can properly prepare the body for meditation. Asanas are subtle exercises to help us remove energetic blockages that prevent the flow of energy that can lead to stiffness or tightness in the body.
Asana wasn’t conceived as a performance for others. It was about moving the energy in our body. Because when our energy is moving freely, we feel comfortable in the body. You can feel this when you twist, invert, or cut off blood circulation momentarily in some asanas. Although the postures may seem uncomfortable, when you do them right for your body with steady breathing, you feel like you are flying, balancing on air.
Remember Aparigraha And Enjoy Where You’re At In Your Practice
When I was in Bali, my teacher Ida Ji discussed how the fifth yama, aparigraha, related back to strength, flexibility, and mobility. Yama is an attitude or an ethical code that we strive for in how we relate to others. Aparigraha is committing yourself to not grasp for something out of your reach. How aparigraha applies to our asana practice is that as students, we should do our best to listen to the teacher’s instruction. If our teacher tells us not to do an asana that day or to use a prop, we should take care to listen to see if this is what we need. Sometimes, our ego can get in the way and we interpret a block or a strap as being a shortcut when we know we can do it.
Yes. You can probably do it. Withstand it.
But for what purpose?
Taking aside potential injury, what is the purpose to pushing yourself at a punishing pace? Discipline is not about hurting yourself. It’s not about going farther, faster, harder every day. That’s not inherently better or progress.
It doesn’t say anything about you if you can’t hold a posture without falling out of it. It doesn’t say anything about you if you feel like your practice isn’t improving at the rate that you want… and that’s also a blog post for another time!
When it comes to yoga asana as a harmony between mobility and strength, we can desire one over the other. This tends to happen when we have the other thing.
My strong students are not very mobile, while my students with open hips struggle in inversions.
And I can see sometimes this pushing for something more.
There is nothing wrong with pushing yourself to go more, especially when you’re in the zone, but what I am offering here is the self-reflection of what is the root cause. And again, not applying labels to what is there, but simply observing. Noting that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to push for the sake of it. We like a little spice. But is this way serving you? Is it serving you if you are constantly holding yourself back from exploring?
Enjoy where you are at in your practice.
How Aparigraha Can Inspire You In Creating Yoga Asana Sequences
As a teacher, aparigraha can also apply to you when it comes to creating an asana class that is a balance between mobility and strength.
Teachers can also have egos.
You must have had the experience of a power yoga or hot yoga teacher, upon seeing students comfortable with their practice, crank it up a notch or two. Their voice becomes unbearably loud, and they hold us hostage in plank or chaturanga for way longer than usual. That is the opposite of trauma-informed teaching, and my TikTok take/shitpost is that the teacher is actually trying to give us new traumas.
Yoga asana teachers should create sequences that set students up for success. A yoga asana sequence should make our body strong, mobile, and flexible. This means that whatever “peak” poses we are building towards, our muscles and joints should be strong enough to produce or maintain the force of a pose, and our joints be mobile enough to get into, stay, and get out of the pose.
A teacher should know that mastering an asana is not about doing it “perfectly” or to an “ideal” but holding space for students to find the shape, to learn their body well enough that they reveal the shape of their body in any particular asana.
And to all yoga students, this is your daily reminder that mastering yoga asana is not about doing it perfectly to an ideal shape. Can you consider mastery as connection to your body? When you learn your body’s interpretation of an asana so well that you are at peace with what is revealed?
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be flexible. I wrote this to expand upon my thoughts on flexibility, mobility, and strength. All that I intend with this post is to share my insights on what may be benefits that are not as obvious or commonly talked about as flexibility.
Written By: Irene Lo