generally specific

It seems like I've been saying this a lot lately: "Yoga classes are general. You are specific."  

When General Is Good
When you first start doing yoga, you do what the instructor says to the best of your ability because you don't know anything else to do.  The poses have great benefits.  You've been told it'll be good for you by a magazine article, or a health professional, or a friend or family member who loves yoga.  But moving your body in all these new directions is foreign so you trust in the instructor.  You put your hands here, lift your leg like this, turn your toes that way, extend your spine.  You keep coming back to class and the poses become more familiar.  You start to pay attention to your breath.  You realize you can balance better.  You feel great after getting off the mat.  In those first few weeks or months, just moving will have benefit.  That is the general part.  Yoga asana have general benefits and you begin to experience some of them.  This pose is energizing.  That one is calming.  This one helps you breathe better.

And When It's Not
But saying a particular pose always has benefits is like saying almonds are good for everyone.  It is absolutely true that almonds have protein and good fats and are high in calcium.  But if you are highly allergic to almonds, they can kill you.  That may be a bit extreme, but a yoga pose that is supposed to bring more dynamic energy into your being isn't worth it if it also pinches a nerve in your back each time you do it.  This is when it is important to leave off working in a general way and become specific.  You need to learn how you are not like everyone else so that you can learn to move more fully within your body. 

The Lie of Listening
Yoga instructors tell students to "listen to your body and stop when you need to."  Having taught for over 17 years, I can tell you that most people don't have any sense of how to listen to their bodies.  It's not their fault.  We ignore or numb ourselves to sensations of pain or discomfort for years because, as a culture, we have breathed in the limiting mindset of "No pain, no gain/Suck it up/Push through the difficulty."   And now, suddenly, a new yoga student is expected to listen to their body and stop when needed.  Riiiiight.   When the yoga instructor encourages you to move into a modification of a pose, you're thinking, "Screw that! I'm doing the real pose," not understanding that the modification is not only a real pose, but may be the best pose for you.  When he or she says to "come out when you need to," you're holding your breath and thinking, "I. Can. Hold. This."

How on earth are you supposed to learn to listen to yourself?  

It Starts With A Question
As you wait for your next class to begin, observe how your body is different from your neighbor on the next mat.  I don't mean in the sense of envy or critical comparison.  Are you similar in muscular development?  Are you the same height, weight, build?  Are you comparably limber?  Or stiff?  Probably not.  You also may have injuries that are not in common; life experiences you do not share.  When you begin to practice, take stock of a few specific aspects of your body.  How tall do you feel?  What is your energy level like at the beginning?  Is it easy to breathe?  As class continues, take a few moments here and there to stop and see if anything you noted at the beginning of class is different.  And is that difference a positive or negative change?  

It is through self-awareness that you will be able to practice less generally and more specifically.  It is in noticing how different parts of the practice affect you that you will begin to cultivate self-awareness.

Permission To Be Specific
This past week, I took a class.  An old ankle injury has been bothering me as the weather turned colder.  We started in Tadasana.  I felt collapsed in my right ankle and in my right hip.  I tried the first standing poses which usually feed my legs and make my whole body wake up.  Not today, they didn't.  So as the class moved into more standing poses, I laid down on my back and starting working in Supine Mountain (Supta Tadasana) and various other supine poses.  I created the same actions I would have used had I been able to find them while standing.  I wasn't doing the same poses as the class, but I was doing the same work.  Every time the class came back to Tadasana, I stood up and joined them.  I felt taller and more stable in my right ankle and hip.  Every time I tried to join the class in a standing pose, that stability would disappear, and so I would return again to my supine practice.  I was able to join the group in Prone work (Cobra, Locust, etc.), but anything up on my feet was depleting.

It has taken me years of experimenting and asking myself questions before, during, and after practice that led me to practice in class that way.  I also knew the instructor understood that what I was doing was listening to myself.  It wasn't a criticism of her instruction or the poses she chose to teach.  My body needed something else.  Something specific.   I needed poses that would benefit my specific injuries that specific day.

Look, it is easier to not pay attention to your own needs, and to stay with the group.  It is the path of least resistance.  No one wants to be the different one in a class.  But if doing a yoga pose causes you discomfort, then not attending to that discomfort means you have stopped doing yoga.  In our "Just Do It" culture, it takes more strength and courage to NOT do what the group is doing if that pose is going to cause you pain. 
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You may be new to yoga, but you've lived in your body your whole life.  Start paying attention to what poses make your body feel better, which ones help you breathe more deeply, which ones feed your energy.  And next time the class goes into that pose that causes you discomfort (or worse, pain), try doing something else. The class is general; YOU are specific.