I started yoga about six months ago, primarily in an attempt to heal from a car accident. Physical therapy and weekly massages were slightly helping the severe pain that I had been in for over a year. Over the past five years I've also been through intense emotional stress and trauma, and although a few people had encouraged me to turn to yoga for healing I didn't quite take that leap until I physically couldn't deal with the pain anymore.
When I first began, child's pose was one of biggest yoga challenges for me. Child's pose is where you sit on your knees and bring your chest and arms forward down onto the ground. I felt uncomfortable, my knees hurt, and I felt as if I looked silly with my butt straight up in the air. I couldn't breathe well in the position because all of my stomach fat felt squished. I felt as if I were suffocating from the rolls of fat in my neck and all the extra fat that I had acquired in my breasts. (Busty girl problems....sounds like a good problem for some people to have but trust me, it's not a good feeling). I beat the hell out of myself emotionally while I stayed in that pose. I beat up myself that I had gained so much weight and that I had lost all of the flexibility that I used to have. I beat myself up that I used to be a dancer and that this one day would have been easy for me. I would frequently pop my head up and compare myself to others. I hated it.
Most importantly, the pose psychologically was difficult for me. The first few months I would only do it for brief moments and then I would roll out of it when I felt severe anxiety creeping up on me. It was actually more psychologically difficult than physical, to be honest. I hated to feel vulnerable in such a position. I could feel my yoga instructor circling the room sometimes and it made me uneasy. Sometimes I didn't hear anything and the stillness made me even more uneasy. Other times, especially if the instructor was standing right in front of me, I would have flashbacks of certain things that had happened over the past few years where I would put my head down and cry. I felt submissive, as if I were cowering. I cried and I cried and I cried. And had lots of fear and anxiety.
For so many months I felt like such a failure because all anyone every talks about is how great child's pose feels to them. People also talk about how great savasana pose is too, which is a relaxing pose where you lay on your back at the end of a yoga session. I'll detail my experience with savasana at another time. However, I have struggled with both poses primarily because I view them as passive poses where I am in a vulnerable position. In child's pose your head is down and your butt is up in the air. It sounds irrational but a woman's worst fear is always to be sexually assaulted and feeling as if your butt is straight up in the air makes one feel vulnerable. Having your head down on the ground leaves you vulnerable to not being able to see what was coming to you. For two years in counseling I would frequently label my experience as "being kicked when I was down" and as a result of multiple and repeated attacks from so many angles and so many people and for so very long, I developed a state of hyper vigilance designed to protect myself. In my mind's eye, I had developed an image of myself of being down on the ground, rolled in a ball, being kicked while I was down and trying to get up and being beat and kicked over and over. That's how I always described it for years and sometimes still describe it. It was not easy not being able to have my head up and view my surroundings. It wasn't easy letting go of the hyper vigilance.
Each instructor kept telling me to keep pushing through it.
Ground yourself and grasp the ground, they would say.
You are safe here, they would tell me.
Grip the ground as if you are planting yourself, they would suggest.
This is a safe, resting pose where you lay to recover, they asserted. Two of my teachers could sense something was wrong and would rub my back while I cried. Just keep trying, they comforted me. A few tried to give me a bolster to lay my head on or put towels down to make it more comfortable. One day I just stopped crying while in that pose. One day the flashbacks of me putting my head down and crying in front of someone stopped while I was in that pose. With each passing class, I started feeling as if the anxiety that I felt in the pose started slipping away. And then one day I felt as if I was submitting in a good way, in a way that I can't quite explain yet, a way that suggests to me that I need to give up the hyper vigilance and just leave it in the hands of the universe. I felt as if I were bowing before an almighty being, even though I am not religious and am somewhat agnostic.
Not too long ago, my favorite instructor Sally told me about a new instructor that she had at her class. She spoke so highly of him and encouraged me to take his class. Up until that point she had encouraged me to take another male's class and go to a male healer, but she was well aware that I had major trust issues with males. I had the life beat out of me for so many years by so many males from so many directions and in such a sustained and vicious way. And I was failed and further victimized by the male police and attorneys who should have protected me. Yoga brought up so many other deep seated issues that I had not addressed throughout my entire life that had led me to the point of being the punching bag of so many men. Over ten males kicking me when I was down over the past five years, sensing my weakness. I refused to take the new male yoga teacher's class.
She asked me to go in one day and said that she would stay there while I was there. The class was good but made me uncomfortable. The next day I was angry because I went to take her class and she had him teach it without telling me. I was angry. But suddenly when I was in child's pose, he told me that I was arching my back too far down towards the front, which made by stomach and chest hit the ground. He asked me to arch my back the other way, like a cat. Frankly I wanted to rebel against him but I decided to just try it.
Do more cat, he suggested. And suddenly, something different happened in my mind while I was in child's pose. The subtle way of changing my back and chest made me feel less vulnerable. Previously having my chest on the ground felt so passive but the subtle change of arching my back upwards and lengthening my spine gave me more of a feeling of strength, more of a feeling that I could bounce and spring forward instead of being squished down on the ground. The subtle change of my back caused a change in my hands feeling much more active and in control. With my back raised higher and my spine extended, my fingers felt strong and gripped the ground.
I kept taking his classes and learned that he had such a sophisticated understanding of human anatomy that started to help me once again feel at one with my body. I had previously felt like an empty shell that was nothing but a punching bag. Although years ago, I would take one male teacher's class I generally have gravitated towards women primarily because I am a feminist and want to support female business. However, due to his sophisticated knowledge of the body system I decided to give him a try with private lessons. After my first lesson, I felt so many changes in my body that enabled me to feel more physically and emotionally empowered that I decided to continue to study in private sessions as well as group sessions.
During our last class, as I got into child's pose, he kept prompting me to raise by back by saying,
"More cat, more cat, more cat". I arched my back up more and more, extended my spine, and gripped my hands on the ground. And suddenly, for the first time ever in child's pose, I had a flash of the imagine of a cat in my head and thought, "Cats can claw their freaking eyes out". Not that I want to gravitate towards violence or anything but it felt like something inside me had shifted regarding child's pose and regarding my healing process-all due to a subtle change in my back. It was the first time ever in six months that I no longer felt vulnerable but felt empowered and strong. That night I found myself doing child's pose again, over and over, as well as this morning, delighting in the same sense of relief and empowerment.
Years ago I told a friend that I was completely broken beyond belief and would never recover. At the time he told me that a woman like me could never be broken. "You are like a boxer, merely sitting it out on the side, regaining your strength". I didn't believe him at the time. This morning, while I laid in child's pose, I heard those words in my head and I finally realized that I am ready to work towards embracing child's pose as a way to let go, rest and recover. I feel empowered and delighted that I am now slowly embracing a pose that caused me so much fear and anxiety. And, thanks to pictures, I am learning that sometimes our minds play tricks on us because my butt is not actually sticking up so high in the air as I thought it was for over six months.
Yoga is so much more than just exercise. It's about healing. And finding connections to other people, to yourself, and the universe. And in my experience, it brought up issues in my life that I hadn't even thought about in years. At one point in the beginning I feel that it made me regress and relive so many things that I haven't even thought about it years and things that I didn't even realize bothered me. They always say that we carry trauma in our bodies but I just never knew what that meant. I'm not yet where I need to be but I've always tried to micromanage and fully plan out all aspects of my life. Child's pose reminds me that I just need to let go and give up my power to what the universe wants to do with me. It reminds me that I can learn to love or respect something that I previously hated. It teaches me that with consistency that things with incrementally get better.
I still have a long way to go but I am starting to feel something shifting in my life. I hope that someone in the world finds this useful or helpful. I hope that one person who is afraid to do yoga because they are overweight might feel inspired as I document my journey. I also hope that perhaps sharing my journey will help others who have suffered trauma understand how powerful yoga can be in healing. I hope that it helps one yoga instructor in the world be more perceptive of their student's traumas and physical struggles with certain poses. I hope I am able to heal myself one yoga pose at a time.
