Epilogue - Alignment and Worldview

As most of us know, in Trikonasana, triangle pose with right foot front, we usually are feeling the inner thigh of the front leg, the left side body, or a combination of thereof as the main course, what I call “the parts that are talking (or sometimes screaming) the loudest. It’s the “what you’re supposed to be feeling” in the pose.  This is when the “one size fits all” generally works. Not on this particular day.

A few months ago, I was teaching “Ageless Yoga, “ a slower paced class for people who need more time to get into and out of the poses, mostly older baby boomers and people who injured themselves in another class. As usual, I was inviting them to explore different aspects of the pose – what was going to work for them given their own particular issues.

We lined ourselves up, did a few times dynamically to warm up for the hold, then we held it. I asked them to think about releasing the “second side of the back” to allow more depth in the pose and more freedom around the spine and side body. That normally increases action on the stretching side. When I asked them if they were feeling more in the side body, not one of them was feeling that as the point of focus! I went to inner thigh. What about there? Feeling more? No. Really???!!! Each person was feeling triangle in a completely different place ie – the quadriceps, the calf, the shin, the eyebrow, whatever. Their alignment was good, no danger there, and yet every experience was distinctly different from the next. I was astounded and let me tell you, I’m rarely astounded.

 I had made the assumption that they would be feeling pretty much the same thing, give or take a quad or hamstring, but when I checked in with them, every person was feeling something completely different (nothing dangerous btw), and all of them were feeling things I never even considered one could feel in that particular pose. What an eye opener! What I learned then and there is to never assume I know what someone else is feeling. (you’d think that after all the therapy I’ve had, I would have that one down by now!)  I had never walked their walk, and I didn’t have the perspective to know what being in a 60 or 70 year old body feels like.

So again, I see that  I am blessed. I have students who are willing to come to class and teach me. For that I am truly grateful.

What does that example have to do with alignment? Maybe nothing, maybe everything, but it helped me open my eyes and heart in a new way, thus changing my worldview. Now, with this new Self, I start the process of re-aligning myself with the Self that I just grew to be.

Namaste.