Practising patience

March 18, 2020 Becci Curtis

The last yoga class of term, Magdalen College, Tuesday 10th March 2020.

Putting yoga to work in a time of pandemic

To borrow a phrase from the internet: what a year this past week has been.

If nothing else, it's a lesson in how quickly things can change and - fortunately/unfortunately - it's a lesson we're all learning. I hold fear in one hand, hope in the other, and I'm not sure where to place either of them.

My primary instinct is to get to work. On an emotional level, I want to comfort (because I need comfort): we’ll all be ok, this too shall pass, I'm here for you, we'll get through this. On a practical level I want to help (because I, too, need help): what do you need? What can I bring? What can I make? What can I do? All ways of saying: I don't know what I need, I don't know what to ask for, I don't know how to be constructive, I don't know what to do. Tell me. Please.

Maybe you’re stockpiling. Maybe you’re denying, or downplaying. Worst-case, or best-case scenario planning - it's all the same: fear and hope.

Saving time

November 4, 2019 Becci Curtis

This is not a 'how to'. I'm not offering tips.

You won't learn any productivity 'hacks' ("yoga smarter, not harder"). This post is not about stockpiling time (can it even be done?), but saving it: rescuing, protecting, reclaiming, savouring even. How? By doing less; much, much, less.

Tending the weeds

June 28, 2018 Becci Curtis

Yesterday I was listening to the environmental writer, Emma Marris, talking about how little we value nature unless it’s pristine, beautiful, and untouched by humans - unless humans have positively impacted that beauty, of course. It struck me that this is often how we approach our lives (or, this is often how I approach my life anyway).

My antenna clearly tuned into this theme, I started listening to Michael Stone’s Dharma talk ‘Buddhas on Blades of Grass’. In it, he discusses the Buddhist monk, Dongshan, telling his students to ‘go to a place where there are no weeds’. Spoiler alert: there is no such place.

On the surface, we value moments of hardship less than we value moments of comfort and security. We dismiss (and try to forget) the people who negatively impact us, and we move closer towards (and hold in our memory) the people that offer us support and have failed to disappoint. This is a safe and logical strategy. We want to repeat good experiences, we do not want to repeat bad ones. We would always choose comfort over discomfort. We would always choose to tend the flowers and not the weeds.

However, when I start to dig deeper into this thought, I realise that the times when I have been the least comfortable have held the greatest personal meaning for me. Hard times have paved the way for growth, wisdom, resilience, and humility. Moments of crisis are perhaps the times where we are the most easily intimate with our thoughts and feelings, precisely because we cannot escape ourselves, no matter how much we would like to.

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Modest goals for sustainable change

For better and worse, the new year brings with it a lot of expectations.

I love working towards goals and I fully back anyone who is driven to take personal responsibility for the things they can influence and change. But we've all heard the anecdote: lots of people take out a gym membership in January and rarely attend past February.

Why? Because most people try to make too big a change, too frequently, too soon. (Yep, I’m in the ‘most people’ category too).

Unrealistic expectations set us up to fail (or fall asleep) at the first hurdle.

Small changes in behaviour that are repeated (and scaled up) over time allow new patterns of behaviour to form so that new habits can stick.

What's your movement mood?

We make out that moving our bodies is difficult:

No time
Can't do that
Foot won't go there
Do what with the arms?!
Breathe in, fold forward, breathe out, bend knees
Roll out the mat, put on the kit
But, it's raining

Forget about being ‘good’ for a moment and throw getting it ‘right’ to one side.

Take a few minutes to check in with yourself and explore some low, moderate, and high-energy movements.

Do your wrists feel weak? Part 2: Strengthen

“I’m having trouble holding a plank position because my wrists do not feel strong enough”.

Yes, tell me about it!

Not only have I learned how to deal with my own ‘weak-feeling wrists’ over the years (and succeeded in ditching the wrist tape, wrist straps, and wrist supports), having wrists that don’t ‘feel strong enough’ is such a common experience that I decided to share a whole host of ideas in an attempt to help you out.

This post is part of a series designed to give you more options than:

‘Just skip it’
‘Put your knees down’, or
‘Do child’s pose instead’

Because? We’re adults goddammit! We can deal with things and learn to do stuff we used to find too difficult.

You can start this series in any order, you don’t need to perfect one set of options before trying out the next. Simultaneously working on mobility and strength, plus learning to adapt what you need to adapt, is a solid approach for most people without an acute injury. (Do your wrists feel like they’re about to fall off? You need a doctor, not a yoga teacher.)

Do your wrists feel weak? Part 1: Mobilise

If your wrists feel weak, taking part in a floor-based movement (or fitness) class will probably be a frustrating experience. Even in beginner-level classes, you are likely to find many positions that require you to place some bodyweight through your hands, like:

table (all fours) and cat-cow
downward dog and upward dog
plank and push-up.

If you have trouble holding (or starting in) any of these positions, you are presented with limited options to make things more manageable:

Skip it
Spend less time there and/or
Bend your knees/place your knees down on the floor.

All of these options are valid. They might suit you and what you are trying to achieve perfectly well, and they could be very appropriate ways to keep your body moving while coping with a flare-up, or accommodating an injury. They are not options to be scoffed at, or to make you feel less than.

However (really just a nice way to avoid saying ‘but’), if these are your limited options simply because you don't know what else you could try, keep reading.

This blog series is going to give you some extra and alternative options to consider.

"How should yoga feel? Just stretchy?"

I've been delving into the murky world of internet forums (I have my reasons) and came across a thread on the modern source of all wisdom (Mumsnet) that began with:

'I realise this is a ridiculous question but I’ve never really ‘got’ yoga. I’ve tried a good 3/4 times with Adriene [the YouTube sensation] and even though I am so keen to love it I just haven’t.
But my question is how should it feel? Just stretchy? There was one pose where I had to hook one knee then put my hands behind it and pull which felt very stretchy in my hamstring but I was a bit like ‘oh is this right?’ - it wasn’t painful just different.'

There isn't anything ridiculous about this question, or the replies to it. In fact, I think this one small corner of the internet succeeds in pointing out many of the conflicting ideas and strange assumptions that are widely (and over-confidently) shared about yoga.

Speed date your hamstrings

A little anatomy knowledge can go a long way

I teach a lot of very smart people and yet, a lot of these people lack a basic understanding of how their bodies work.

Why? Because most of us weren’t taught this stuff. Only a small amount of human anatomy and physiology is taught at school; a little more is taught at upper secondary level if you opt to take a GCSE in PE, but — as someone who only really discovered that they could enjoy anything remotely sporty (let alone develop a ‘physical education’) until their mid-twenties — I certainly didn’t opt for one of those.

Anatomy can be a very dry topic with lots of complex and hard to remember names. But — having learned a lot about bodies and how they work — I also know that gaining knowledge about ourselves can go a long way, especially if it's relevant to who we are, the lives we lead, the activities we do, the ideas and beliefs we currently hold.

Knowing more about our body (the workings of its many muscles and joints, plus all the other amazing stuff it gets on with in the background) can help us make sense of how our body feels (and how we feel in our body).

If getting our nerd on wasn't reason enough, that knowledge can also save us time by helping us to make more informed choices about how we move.

Are your hamstrings a mystery?

It is very common for people to think about their hamstrings in terms of a feeling.

When I recently asked my class to define what the hamstrings were, their responses were general (both in sensation and in terms of location):

"That's easy. They're the things that hurt when I bend forward."
"They're the things at the top of the back of my thighs."

I would wager that every single yoga and movement teacher the world over has heard people talk more about their hamstrings than almost any other topic.

And yet, these words crop-up over and over again: tight, sore, stretch, more.

I think the hamstrings seem to feel like more of a problem because what they are and what they do remains a mystery to most people.

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Unrealistic expectations set us up to fail (or fall asleep) at the first hurdle.

A little anatomy knowledge can go a long way

Are your hamstrings a mystery?

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