Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

their own injuries and, more important, how to prevent them.
    Our bodies always change, and go through many different cycles, strengthening, weakening and, as we have discussed, constantly changing internal muscular spring tensions in response to changes in ouractivity, inactivity, and lifestyle. Over time we can learn to develop and tune our yoga practices to create balance and wellness through the many phases of our multifaceted lifestyles.
    Many people think they are not suited for yoga practice because they have stiffness, weakness, or particular physical problems. Back and joint problems run in my family. Though I was never naturally athletic, I was drawn to swimming and worked hard at conditioning myself. When I was about eleven, I started learning to swim in a large pool at the high school near our house. I loved it, so I went out for the swimming team when I reached high school. During tryouts, I barely made it across the pool and had to talk the coach into letting me on the team. I was always last and the older kids on the team would hold me under the water till I thought I would nearly drown. Somehow my tenacity paid off and by the time I graduated, I had won several medals in swimming. When I first started yoga, it was the mysticism, the philosophy, and spirituality that drew me. I had no idea about physical components of yoga, and when I heard about them, I was not only surprised, but thought it absurd that a workout could have anything to do with spirituality. I now feel quite fortunate that I encountered yogis who included physical practice in their definition of spiritual inquiry and growth.
    When I started Hatha yoga, I was quite stiff, couldn’t touch my toes, and already had some low back trouble. Many poses seemed excruciating and I struggled at them. Sometimes I pulled muscles or pinched nerves and I had to learn to work with and through those problems. My brother became interested in the physical aspects of yoga and started practice too, but every time he experienced some joint pain or ran into some difficulties he would get very discouraged, say he was not athletic, and want to quit. I tried to inspire him with my stories but he eventually gave up. His back pains, immobility, and body problems grew worse. Now I know that people will potentially have more injuries and more problems from
not
doing yoga than from doing it. Noone wants pain or injury, but we should not let fear of it stop us from feeling the greater health yoga can bring.
    It is not my intention here to prescribe specific therapeutic techniques for particular injuries. However, what I can offer may be even more useful and practical. I want to help you begin to shape a context and begin developing a process that will inform and guide you in working with any imbalance or injury. You can actually learn to receive your own body’s feedback and guidance from any injury or physical problems. Specific recommendations someone else may make are only useful to a point, since every injury is different and responds differently, even when seemingly of the same type. For example, I cannot count the times I’ve been asked, “What poses should I do for low back pain?” Lumbar pain is one of the most common ailments we suffer. But even if ten people have similar problems from, say, degenerated or ruptured fifth lumbar disks, none of those degenerations will behave exactly the same, nor will they respond to prescribed poses in the same way. Certain general practices and treatments may aid healing lumbar problems, but what is most useful is to learn the process of listening to your own body’s guidance system.

Pain Is Your Friend
    When we think of pain, most of us probably feel we would rather not have any. We spend a lot of time seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Once I traveled in the Himalayas with a swami friend who headed an
ashram
, or yoga monastery. The swami was committed to service and operated a few leper ashrams in the nearby foothills, so he took me to visit a colony. His lifetime personal assistant was once an impoverished leper whom he helped to heal; later, together, they created this amazing service project. All over India I had seen lepers who were missing body parts and seemed to be wasting away. Leprosy is a horrifying and terrible disease that makes most people recoil or run away. I confess Iwas quite nervous about going to a leper colony, but it was a powerful experience (similar to the death meditation discussed in