The Practice Begins

As I began in earnest to practice yoga asana again I noticed a lot of tightness in my upper back, neck and shoulder girlde that had not been there as a teenager. It was amazing to me how quickly and easily we can allow our bodies to fall into disrepair and neglect. Just a few short years seemed to have set me back a lifetime. I hadn't put on weight, I still swam and walked everywhere but a lack of full body movement exercise combined with sitting at a desk all day had exacerbated the tightness and immobility that the curvature of my spine caused.

I decided to consult a chiropractor, recommended to me by a yoga teacher, and my scoliosis was officially diagnosed for the first time. The subsequent Xray and chiropractic report can be seen in the first post of this blog. On seeing the evidence and, to my mind, severity of the Xray and hearing the report I was initally in shock. But luckily my years of yoga practice had done more than help my scoliosis physically. The philosophical and inward reflecting nature of yoga had helped me to understand that we are all here for a reason, we are all different and we have to love the bodies that we are given.

I will go into the concepts of letting go of our material nature and emotion at a later date, but for now suffice to say that my yoga practice helped me to come to terms with my spine and I soon began an intensive course of physical therapy to compliment my asana practice and to help reverse the muscle develompent which had occurred as a result of my scoliosis causing pain numbness and tightness. As my neck and shoulders started to release, I began to release a lot of emotion. I had been holding that tension in my back neck and shoulders for years. Because that is the part of me that is "made wrong" it's where all the negative emotions had gone and I finally started to let stuff go. I rode the wave of these emotions for weeks and veered from crying to giggling uncontrolably often!

And so I began to explore and heal my body with yoga, a course of action which led to yoga teacher training and beginning to teach yoga to others.

I have come to love my Xray. It still takes my breath away but for quite different reasons. It is something I can't change. It makes me unique. It reminds me of the uniqueness and indivicuality of all the bodies in the universe. It reminds me that our physical bodies are temporary. This is the body I've been given and I must love it for it houses my Spirit. Crooked spine and all. It's also made me more aware in my yoga practice and what my body was created to do. I can translate my own weaknesses into those of my students too and really try and understand their bodies, their areas of tension and weakness. In many ways, my spine is a blessing.

Yoga practice teaches us and gives us the tools to let go.
Developing this ability to let go builds inner strength and helps relieve suffering.

-- Yoga Therapies - Jessie Chapman - Ulysses Press 2003 (p.11)