“Don’t get fancy, just get dancy,” Raise your Glass, P!nk
You’ve all, no doubt, heard of the KISS method. Depending on if it’s the teacher who’s got to behave themselves, or your Dad, who doesn’t, the letters stand for either: “keep it short n’ sweet,” or “keep it simple, stupid”.
Why are we so insistent on: “bigger, better, faster, more!”? My car takes gas and oil, and there’s only one comma in the price. It gets me from point A to point B, although who’s going anywhere at this point in the global pandemic?
My phone is a few years old. The corners of the case are faded, but it still protects the investment I finally paid off. (Ugh, planned obsolescence is so over, right? No? Just me? Hm. Okay.) It’ll keep limping along until the new ones are so different the learning curve steepens significantly. Same with my laptop, tee-shirts, and myriad other detritus.
I prefer to have things simple. My triangular-shaped salty snacks do not need to shred the roof off my pallet. My Yoga practice can be some seated cat-cows, some twists, and essentially a nap. I might never even get off the floor. And. That’s. Okay. Not to say there isn’t a place for Cirque du Soleil-esque contortions, and a hot n’ sweaty, “I -am-spent,” clean up on aisle 3 practices, but that’s not an all-the-time thing. Depends.
In The Injury-Free Yoga Practice by Steven Weiss, MS, DC, RYT, he discusses the “baby bear” intention. This is how we remain injury free: by finding that sweet spot between effort and ease, phoning it in, and going all out. (Can we say b*lls to the wall? Whole hog? Hm…who cares: it’s my blog & I’ll blog if I wanna…)
This brings to mind Samasthiti, also known as “effortless effort,” or Tadasana, mountain pose, in some traditions. It is a tightrope walk, to be sure, but a nice place to revisit over and over again, like a touchstone. As Suzie Hurley of Tacoma Park, MD tells her students, “It’s not how far you go; it’s how you go far!”
Let’s do more movement that just plain feels good. Who cares what it looks like? Of course, as the yogini down in g-d’s waiting room said in class once: “you should listen to your body first, your doctor second, and me third.” In other words, trust yourself. If it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it! It’s oft’ been intoned not to sacrifice for the glory of the pose. Keep it simple, sweetheart. Alignment is in the bones of the hip holder. I want my students to know where their parts are in space: how they apply that knowledge is up to them.
When in doubt, dance! It’s alright, and it’s all right.
If this resonated with you, please feel free to comment below or drop me an email. Until our mats unfurl again, be well.
-M
Yoga by Meredith 