Being Overextended

We are overextended. I think most of us could feel that once we were at home and couldn't do as much as we had before. Maybe this felt relaxing, maybe this made you feel like you were going crazy, maybe you filled up all the open space.

What about on the mat? Most people say, "I go to yoga because I want to be more flexible" and then you stretch and extend and your teacher says extend more and more, and then what? As a beginner or someone who is not as elastic, you must work on extending and stretching but after a long time of practice, if we do too much and do not draw our energy back in, we are overextended. You might not feel anything today, you might be very happy with your flexibility. But what happens when you pull and pull on a piece of taffy?

If an experienced student keeps extending without control then they are over pushing. As my teacher, Gulnaaz says "Injury is happening and we do not know...the pain surfaces after many years."

I see these Instagram videos and I think of myself 20 years ago and I want to holler out.....that's gonna show up later!! I'm so grateful to be under the watchful eye of my teacher every week helping face what I didn't years ago. I just didn't know.

Are there poses that you can just do without thinking? We have been doing the poses for so long we no longer move with awareness. Because the pose is like an old friend we take for granted, we start ignoring the areas that need attention. She says, "we look away from those areas that need help."

An example of how we overextend and look away from our issues.

Take Trikonasana.

If the legs are not wide and the front leg isn't rotating completely, the lower spine won't turn, and then we look up at the hand because we want to do the "finished" pose and what part is turning? But we are "looking away" from why the legs don't spread or why the leg doesn't turn well and creating too much strain in other areas i.e. the neck or brain.

Let's look at the top arm ...better than looking...do the pose and feel... is it disconnected from its socket? What happens to the back and the turning of the pose when you connect the back of the arm into the socket?

Do you feel that harmony? If we can find it on the mat can we hear it playing in our lives?

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