One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is how much longer it will be until I can do yoga without pain. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I will probably always practice in pain.
I started doing yoga nearly 4 years ago. Sure, it’s been off and on, sometimes I went months without practicing, but muscle memory always brought me back to where I left off. After my first few initial classes I noticed that my arches and feet hurt during the entire standing series, so after class I asked the teacher about it and he told me that it will take time for my muscles to adjust to the movement. And I believed him because it made sense.
Well it’s been almost 4 years and my feet still cramp during every single class. My arches and toes ache and I almost always have to sit out a few poses to massage the cramps away. And while I think that teacher was right all those years ago, the body does need time to adjust to new movements, I think I was wrong to believe that I would ever reach a point where my arches would pain free during class. My body just isn’t built that way. I have flat feet and almost no arch. It’s been that way since I was a kid. I remember going to a podiatrist when I was 10 or 11 to get special inserts for my soccer cleats because my heels ached from pronating during soccer games. When I took up running a few years ago and went to a special running store to get fitted for fancy schmancy expensive running shoes, the woman measuring my feet was dumbfounded when my feet “grew” an entire shoe size when I stood with my feet flat on the ground.
One of the cornerstones of yoga is listening to your body and recognizing when you’ve reached your limit. It’s also about knowing when to push past your limits and when to honor the fact that you just can’t go any further. It’s not the most inspiring thing to say “recognize your boundaries and stay within them.” I think that’s contrary to a majority of slogans/advertising/marketing/exercise culture that exists today. Recognizing your limits and pushing past them is touted as the best way to grow/improve/be better. But I would argue that recognizing when to push and when not to push is a vital step in growth.
I’ve recently accepted that I will probably never reach a point where my feet are pain free during yoga. It’s a shitty realization because my practice would be that much more enjoyable if it didn’t hurt. But if it were easy, it probably wouldn’t be worth doing. And I think recognizing and accepting my limits is just as valuable as recognizing my limits and pushing past them.
Namaste friends.
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