“When you are over stretching somewhere to get the optimum movement, have you ever noticed that you are also giving too little attention to other parts of the body? That disturbs the body and makes it shake. If the root of a tree is weak, the tree itself cannot be strong.”
_ _ B.K.S. Iyengar The Tree Of Yoga, p 41
The obstacle is to know if you are over stretching or under doing, over lengthening or collapsing. Either one can cause a discomfort, but the principle will be the same, not enough attention to that place and/or to another. The result is a shakiness in the body, either an actual observable movement like a teetering when you begin to loose your balance, a muscle that gets fatigued, or a more subtle inner shakiness that causes a mental instability and a desire to finish the pose, an inability to stay in it quietly. Sometimes it manifests as a nervous shakiness.
There are many ways to approach ‘fixing’ the imbalance. One is an analytical approach; a review of anatomy of muscles and joints and instructions to see what has come too easily and what one is missing. Another is to stay in the pose and begin to search for the inner feeling and adjustments. Think about the idea of space. When you are making taffy you have to manually pull the candy apart then lump it together again then pull it, etc. If you pull to fast and to far apart the stuff will suddenly snap. If you pull too slowly it begins to sag and droop and will slowly separate. In the first case the space between the cells in the candy haven’t been given time to separate properly. In the second the space has gotten too thin. Both are extreme examples of over stretching. The opposite of this is complete collapsing, like when you are baking bread and the yeast is dead and it fails completely to rise. The resulting bread is like a rock. When collapse occurs the space between cells is too small.
In either case in your asana, over stretching and collapse, it can be helpful to search for ways to feel and create more space. Space can be experienced in many ways. If you feel (sense) your tongue in a relaxed state, it has a feeling of looseness and space. Then when you contract it and make it hard that space disappears. The same thing can be felt in your throat when it is either relaxed or gripped. The hands, palms and fingers are another easy place to understand the difference. Once you can sense the difference you can begin to move that understanding to the more difficult areas in your body while you are in the middle of doing a pose. For instance while you are twisting in Bharadvajasana and staying for a minute or so and you feel an achy muscle in the upper back, see if you can begin to move internally so as to create some space in that area. It may require looking at the opposite side of the body to examine what is being experienced there or diagonally down from the troublesome spot. You may have to adjust the twist some, but once you have that feeling of space can you then continue the twist without disturbing the space?
Practice making space in yoga can spill over onto our real life and may also help in troublesome spots there too. You may find yourself unconsciously making space without realizing it. In a conflict situation it is often useful to take a mental step backwards, take a few breaths, evaluate and then respond. On the highway in situations that you recognize may trigger what is for you a ‘road rage’ it might be wise to drop back and create a little space. Certainly with teen agers it is very useful to wait a few beats before responding. Then when you do respond, whatever the situation you can do so with a firmness and assuredness that comes from a balanced position, not a shaky one.
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