Honesty and Contentment in the Yoga Room

by Nina

Friendship, Love and Truth by Currier and Ives*

Yesterday, Ram’s post about arjava and being honest in your yoga practice spoke directly to something I’ve been thinking about recently. (I love it when that happens!) In Arjava: Cultivating Honesty, Ram said, “on the mat you have a choice to be honest to yourself by respecting and listening to your body or disregarding the harmful warning signs from your body.”

In our post How to Stay Safe While Practicing Yoga, we recommended safety guidelines that you should follow whether you are practicing at home or in a class. In all honesty, I have to say that practicing wisely according to those guidelines may often mean there’s a pose, group of poses, or practice you cannot or should not be doing, sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently.

This can be hard. It’s natural to feel left out when other people in your class or other people you know are doing a pose that you cannot or should not do. It’s also challenging for us long-time practitioners to say goodbye to poses that we used to be able to do (see Goodbye, Lotus Pose for info). But rest assured that you are not missing out on anything essential. Regardless of your limitations, there are still effective ways to foster strength, flexibility, balance, and agility, and to manage your stress levels. That’s why we have four versions of every pose we recommend, as well as alternate poses. And, of course, the experience of practicing asana mindfully, as a moving meditation, is available to everyone, no matter your limitations. Simply bring your awareness to your breath or to any other physical sensation as your practice. (See Practicing Yoga Mindfully for more information on practicing yoga mindfully.)

Practicing arjava in the yoga room is also an opportunity to experiment with cultivating contentment in the safe space (see Yoga Philosophy: Contentment). After you are honest with yourself about what you should and should not be doing, gently remind yourself that you can be content with what you have and what you don’t have. You’ll then find that you can enjoy your time on the mat, no matter which poses you can’t do. (I know this, because I've been through it myself. There are some poses that I used to practice that I can no longer do, such as Lotus pose, Half Lotus, and certain backbends. And there are some poses I'm temporarily avoiding at the moment due to lower back strain, such as seated forward bends and kicking up into certain arm balances. Yet even during my worst periods of limitations, such as when I had a frozen shoulder and could barely move my arm, I have never failed to find a satisfying way to practice.)

And cultivating contentment in the yoga room will strengthen your equanimity muscles while you strengthen your physical ones. You can then take your experience of becoming content with what you have and what you don’t have out into the world at large. 

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