Make Peace with Your Blah Pose

Hey, Emerald yogis! Jen here.  

Every one of us has a yoga pose that's our--well, our blah pose. You don't like how it feels when you're in it, or you just can't get into it at all, or you can get into it and you feel like it's not wrong but it's not the life-changing experience the instructor seems to be selling you.

In my personal practice on my mat, I work with a few different blah poses. I can get into eagle pose but I don't love being in it; I feel imbalanced and claustrophobic and unsteady. I can't get into revolved triangle at all; my body just doesn't go that way, and after 20 years of yoga, it's not going to go that way.

So how can we start to like our blah poses?

First, are you showing up for your blah poses? Are you really? Because if you don't think I notice when a particular student heads to the restroom every single time I mention a particular pose--I absolutely do. I mean, going to the restroom is fine during practice because we are manipulating our bodies around and sometimes needing to go to the restroom is a result. But if you know in your heart that you're literally escaping the room every time you hear the words "half moon" (and hanging out in the bathroom long enough to make sure the class has finished both left and right sides), you're not showing up for the experience. You can't change your blah-pose experience if you're not there.

I think the next thing to consider is that attaching emotions to any poses sort of defeats the point of the practice. I think I said in my last blog post that the poses themselves are neutral--the emotional experience you have on your mat has nothing to do with the poses and everything to do with what you're bringing in and allowing to happen in your mind. So the first thing is to take away the idea of love and hate, and any other emotion you are assigning to the poses. Can you consider your body in each pose without putting it into a good box or a bad box? Can you just witness yourself and note the body sensations as just physical cues and not emotional cues?

So, show up for the pose and boil it down to physical cues, taking emotion out of it. What if you're still having trouble? Well, in that case, you'll have to do a little inward negotiation. When the instructor says, "dolphin," and you know it's your blah pose, say to yourself, "Okay, self. Here comes dolphin. I don't like dolphin. But today I'm just going to move into dolphin, and I don't need to like it, and it's no big deal, and it's just for a couple of breaths and it's done." In this way, the little yoga bomb squad in your head de-fuses the blah pose and takes away its power. It just becomes something you do with no emotion, like taking your shoes off or brushing your teeth. Your consciousness is there but your emotions aren't necessary.

What poses are YOUR blah poses? Are you guilty of running from the room when it's time for the blah poses? Are you filling the blah poses with emotion? Can you de-fuse them so they can work on your body without interference from your inner critic?