Your worth as a yoga practitioner isn’t determined by your asana practice.
I had a conversation with a new(ish) student after class this morning. She’d grown up as a gymnast, then trained in martial arts, but now struggled with shoulder flexion and arm overhead strength.
She’d gone from being able to do handstands, tick tocks, you name it, to losing that range of motion completely due to joint damage.
It was a conversation that resonated with me deeply. My asana practice today is totally different to what it looked like 10 years ago.
Splits, arm balances, inversions were peppered into every practice. I always had a pose I was working towards.
I had definitely been conditioned by certain corners of the London yoga scene to believe that my value as a teacher was bound up in the difficulty of the asana I could do.
Did I enjoy doing those poses? Yes, I loved exploring my physicality and seeing what I was capable of. I liked having a goal, and seeing progress.
But I also pushed myself too hard, too often, and was forever tweaking something or other.
Fast forward to now, age 41 with two young children, a fairly newly diagnosed autoimmune thyroid condition, a prolapse and diastasis later, and it’s safe to say my practice has changed.
During the depths of figuring out what on earth was causing my autoimmune symptoms, which ranged from hair loss and constant joint pain to extreme fatigue, I was completely unable to practise asana. I taught it regularly, but my own practice had shifted to restorative yoga, yoga nidra and chanting.
Navigating prolapse has also meant changes. I still can’t manage abdominal pressure effectively in certain arm balances, and have taken them off the table for now. (Side note: I will share some tips on how I’ve adapted my practice and teaching to accommodate this, as I know many of you will find it useful.)
To cut a long story short, your worth isn’t determined by how your practice looks externally.
Like life, our practice has seasons. There will be times when you feel strong and vital, and times when you have to ease off edge, to explore alternative practices.
To me, the sign of an advanced practitioner isn’t one that can do all the ‘hard’ poses, but one who can sit with the discomfort, who knows when to adapt and ease of edge, who can truly listen in and hold themselves with honesty, kindness and presence regardless of the outcome.
