Doing Hatha Yoga Backwards

[Guest guest]

I Do Yoga Backwards

 

At [age] 13, Matthew Sanford was paralyzed from the

chest down in a car accident that killed his father and

sister. His [hatha yoga] practice is an exploration of the

" really cool subtle things that happen in a yoga pose. "

 

by Anna Dubrovsky

from Yoga + Joyful Living

March-April 2008

 

[Off topic? Sure! I wanted to share this article with

DB--who does hatha yoga--and thought some of our

other readers might find it interesting as well.]

 

I came to yoga because I got tired of overcoming my

body. That's basically what I was told to do: get my

upper body strong and drag my lower body through life.

After 12 years of treating my paralyzed body as an

object to overcome, I just lost so much of the joy of

living. I needed to experience something different. I

needed to feel my body more.

 

I've never lived in the same town as my [hatha yoga]

teacher, so the primary vehicle of my yoga experience

has always been my own practice. That's what a lot of

students are missing when they just go to class. You

can't make things your own in a class and experiment

with them and play with them.

 

I can't lift my legs. I can't flex the muscles. But I feel a

hum, a tingling, a buzz. My yoga practice is trying to

understand the asanas. The instructions in an asana are

intended to amplify your connection to that hum, and I

don't mean this in a touchy-feely New Age way. I

literally mean there's a hum. Because of my paralysis, I

understand and appreciate that the sound Om is actually

calibrated to that buzz, to that hum. So my yoga practice

is trying to watch how alignment and precision amplify

that hum through both my paralyzed and unparalyzed

body.

 

I study lyengar yoga. I've been practicing for nearly 17

years. I'm not so worried any more about what

complicated poses I can do. I'm much more interested in

refining the base of a pose. If you can continually

deepen or refine the quality of your base in any simple

pose, then the rest just comes.

 

Because I don't walk, my practice almost always begins

with some time to really feel the floor, the earth. So I'll

sit in dandasana (staff pose) and just really feel. I'll then

stretch my heel by pulling one foot back, because that's

what you get from walking. I warm up by doing what

most yoga practitioners get by standing.

 

I do full poses, but I also do parts of poses. I break them

apart. For example, it's too much work and takes too

many people to help me get into headstand, shirshasana.

So I have to start thinking about what's going on in

shirshasana that's important for the spine and the mind-

body relationship. I'm relatively confident now that the

feeling in the spine in shirshasana is similar to the

feeling in the spine in the lotus, padmasana. Of course,

pressure on the top of your head does something to your

spine in space, so I might put a book on my head. I

might do chaturanga dandasana (four-limbed staff pose)

with my head slightly touching the wall. You have to

learn to extend through your whole body. That extension

has some similarities to what I imagine is going on when

you're lifting up into shirshasana. Like a quilt, I'm

piecing together parts of poses. That being said, dang, I

wish I could do shirshasana. I have shirshasana envy.

 

In general, when I teach yoga and adapt yoga and

practice yoga, I have to go from the experience of the

pose to the action, as opposed to going from the

action-doing trikonasana (triangle pose) 3,000 times-

to the experience. I do yoga backwards. I have to intuit

the feeling, the sense of direction.

 

I have to have faith in the building blocks. But isn't that

true for you, too? That's really yogic realization, when

you don't get lost in the drama of the full pose, when

you keep it simple. And then the other stuff just

happens.

 

Sanford's book, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and

Transcendence, probes the mind-body connection. Visit

http://www.matthewsanford.com

and http://www.mindbodysolutions.org for further

information.

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

" For example, it's too much work and takes too many people to help me get into

headstand,

shirshasana... That being said, dang, I wish I could do shirshasana. I have

shirshasana envy. "

 

Okay, this article was touching and interesting, yet the quote above was funny

to me.

 

I only do a variation on Bikram yoga. I tried other kinds of yoga and ended up

tearing a huge

hole in my shin when I lost balance in a headstand and destroyed a livingroom

table.

 

An Indian guy I worked with took notice of the gash on my leg and asked me about

it and

when I said " Yoga injury " with a shrug he looked at me horrified and said " You

know, that's

just wrong. Really, just wrong! "

 

If it wasn't for a local " hot yoga " studio I couldn't do yoga at all. As helpful

as it is, it's just

incredibly challenging for me.

 

pr