Disclaimer: I’m a bendy (and now strong) girl but I don’t know if I qualify as “hypermobile.” I have no wish to dampen the importance or seriousness of syndromes and medical issues related to hypermobility or the blogs raising these issues, bur rather to provide the story of what it felt like to have my mobility bubble burst.
We’re all going to hell in a hypermobile handbasket.
My up dog still requires a ton of work. But look, you don’t see my hyperextended arm, do ya?
You got me: reading the parade of hypermobility blogs has left me uncomfortable, my yoga panties in a bunch. Using words like “perilous” and “pathological” to describe mobility and making assertions that certain flexi people are just “exploiting the equipment they came with” and don’t actually do any work in their poses sounds, hmm, dramatic and judgmental, even if a bit spot on and warranted in some cases. Ok, I’ll admit this hurts ’cause it’s annoyingly true — when applied to ME of six-plus years ago: I was able to do the big ashtanga backbends before I ever heard “Ekam” or knew the pose names. But did I actually do those poses? Is it sthira sukham asanam when your breath is nonexistent or worse, irrelevant? When your foundation isn’t even an afterthought; when nothing inside the body or mind is yoked to anything, but rather, splayed apart?
That’s pretty much where I was when I flopped into Colorado almost six years ago, land of the wise Richard Freeman-freed, Shiva Rea-rainbowed and anusara-animated crew, who let me know that perhaps my heart had melted a bit too much (prior teachers in New York had also hinted at this but damn if I could hear them). My first class there a teacher circled me like a pirhana as I bound my hands in extended side angle (duh, of course I did the bind), totally in a backbend. Did she applaud the incredible beauty of my being? Hell no.
“Knit your lower ribs in!”
(Little fact about me: I don’t fucking know how to knit.)
That day my mobility bubble burst, and boy did I hate Ms. “knit-your-ribs” for it. This was the beginning of the long, downward fall from grace of my lower ribs. (Another little factoid about me: my lower back bends in half, independently of anything else in my body. PS-my lower ribs are along for this mobile ride.) Countless other teachers chimed in; my rogue ribs and concomitantly bendy back became my problem child, my own personal incessantly talked about Donald Trumpian hot mess.
Then I ventured over to the Yoga Workshop, where a teacher I came to admire diplomatically approached me in every goddamn standing pose and every umpteenth upward dog:
“Maybe try a little microbend in that knee”
perhaps a little micro bend in those elbows”
I was a recent teacher training graduate so I knew that “micro-bending” was often suggested in cases of hyperextension– come to think of it, as a recent TT grad, I knew everything– so I wanted to scream in her nice face:
“LADY I AM NOT FUCKING HYPEREXTENDED”
(Actually, I am totally fucking hyperextended.)
In my defense, I’d never seen my arms locked out before. As for my legs, compared to the hyperextended dancers I grew up with, I didn’t think my little bit of hyperextension moved the needle at all. (It does.)
Fortunately, I continued with mysore at the yoga workshop, and eventually the teachers there pulled me over to the dark side of “micro bending” and gently into ashtanga by failing to push me away with judgment and high-horseness. I moved to DC and continued with it. In return, Ashtanga provided me with tremendous gifts: skilled teachers who worked with me individually, who encouraged me just as much as they prodded and pushed me. And Ashtanga has this annoying thing where you can’t exploit anything, you can’t get anywhere without work. Even if you get by a little like this, a roadblock will appear and bitchslap you back to the drawing board. Like my backbend. Man, I had to learn to drop back and stand back up–can’t do that without using your whole body, mainly legs. Couldn’t just do that wheel by folding my lower back in half anymore, no. And then the inversions– the headstand, the crow pose, and ultimately pincha, I had to find something foreign to me– what David Garrigues calls the “apanic” shape– the opposite of my rogue rib/bendy back pattern. Ashtanga built strength into me that tamed my pliable shoulders, grounded my legs in forward folds and finally, helped me find the “line” (that’s a David Garrigues-ism) in all the poses, whether standing, backbends, or upside down ones, a line that does not leave space for resting on hyperextended laurels, or splitting my body in half in a backbend.
Since then I’ve learned, and keep learning, how to balance my flexible spots with strength. I’ve learned how glorious it feels when everything in the body is connected and the breath flows through it. Lord help me, do I sound new agey? So call me hyper-worried, but Im concerned about the legions of yogis and 200-hr TT grads reading the parade of suddenly hip hypermobility blogs and then stumbling upon a girl like me six years ago, bound in an extended side angle, ribs out, doing a deep backbend untethered to anything, and hyperextending legs in triangle pose.
I’m a little concerned that we’ll move from the extreme of bendy worship to the extreme of bendy bashing. For instance, that we might:
(1) assume people (largely women) are “not doing work” in their poses and just exploiting their god-given cirque-dee soleil-ity. Perhaps you should call me hypersensitive here, because I still do very deep backbends. But they are entire different from the backbends I used to do. I wouldn’t say I back off in practice now; rather, I focus on balance overall in the poses I do. I feel my backbends mostly in my legs and the fronts of my thighs now, rather than in my lower back. I can still bend my foot up to my head in a split, it’s just that now, my pelvis is in a posterior rather than anterior tilt when I do so (and my psoas has a lot to say when I do this, i.e., it curses). The work is still there. It’s just that I had to do work to find the work.
(2) inadvertently shame overwhelmingly female students. The ribs/lower back thing was difficult for me because I have a butt that sticks out (hey, isn’t that what a butt is supposed to do?) and years of self consciousness about it. (This is my tailbone down, world, fucking deal with it.) Frankly, it’s not like I can switch “off” my hyperextended elbows or my mobile back. It’s hard to take cues about something that feels innately and irreversibly part of me, particularly when the cues make me feel “wrong.” In truth I feel paralyzed here, because six years ago there was little you could say about my body that I WOULDN’T find personally offensive. The only constructive thing I can add is that certain teachers had a way of balancing every adjustment with an acknowledgment of the perfection of where I already was.
(3) forget that change is possible and keep things static with pejorative labels. That we’ll convince even partially bendy people that they are broken by diagnosing them with a mobility “problem.” That we will give them a label they cannot live down.
But like Kristen Krash, I have hope. Maybe I’m stubborn (I am). But even I learned and evolved with the help of good teachers. One day I found myself lamenting my flex lower back/ribs to the incomparable Mary Taylor. I was trying to stabilize my body in an upside down position and hating on my wiggly middle.
“It’s a curse” I said.
Without a beat, Mary said ” It’s also a gift.”
I hold these words close to me and think of this exchange often. Where would I be, if the teachers I worked with didn’t see the possibility of how balanced my body and practice could become? Where would I be, if I hadn’t found the gift of work where I thought there was none?
….how did I, a one time lumbar spine compressing front rib protruding asana diva, learn? From the teachers who got through to me. Who also taught as many students as I went on to myself. Who also knew of and were able to express to me not only the problem of what I was doing wrong in my search for sensation, but–and this is key–were also able to offer an alternative approach to the pose that didn’t just close off my “release valves” (term borrowed from Gary Kraftsow) and allowed me to explore an entirely different sensation. “Stretch” is a sensation (whether or not muscles actually stretch is a whole debate in itself) but so are “stability”, “length”, and “space.” -Kristen Krash*
So a little hope and a little worry: hope that good teachers will continue to skillfully prod the flexi folks to grow, and worry that we’ll make a lot of judgmental assumptions about female students in deep poses (call me a Debbie Down… and Up). When I come upon flexi folks I try to remember that girl in the bound extended side angle suddenly hearing about her lower ribs like they were some strange parasite. I remember the ashtanga teachers who slowly and gently encouraged me just as much as they worked to evolve me. That teacher years ago was smart– and right! — about my ribs; it’s possible I was oversensitive and just not ready to hear what she had to say. Either way, a little patience seems wise and kind.
* * *
Years later, I’ve so bought into the story of my “broken, rogue ribs, too much lower back/hyperextended” body that even as my body and practice have changed, my storyline has not. A few weeks ago in the mysore room, my teacher, Sammy, came by as I OVERworked in downward dog to reign in my “rogue” ribs and — he stopped me!
“Someone once told you to pull your lower ribs in, right?” (I practically rolled my eyes. Ya think?)
“You don’t need to do that anymore.”
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*On January 13, Matthiew Remski re-posted a wonderful and thoughtful comment (a blog in itself, really) written by Kristen Krash, a DC yoga teacher turned eco-lodge, retreat destination, and learning center leader. I’m having trouble posting a link to it but you can find the post because was public, under the date January 13, 2016.