We all have limits. The question is, do you know when you’ve pushed beyond yours? My thought of the week is just about that: finding the edge but not diving over it.
When I was a kid, I used to walk right up to the edge of cliffs and lookouts, particularly when we’d be on a family camping trip to a State or National Park. I had this curiosity about what it would be like to “fly” over the edge. It was common for my Mother’s hand to be gripping the waist band of my shorts just in case I actually thought I could fly. I loved stepping up to the edge. It wasn’t until I went bungy jumping off a bridge in New Zealand that my curiosity was satiated; it didn’t feel exactly like the soaring feeling I thought it would offer. It felt like falling…really fast.
We all have our boundaries but unless we have awareness, we often don’t know where that border begins and ends. In our physical practice of yoga our edge is the place where we can maintain steadiness of breath, move freely without pain and feel the effects of the pose. If we press beyond our edge, we often face discomfort, hold our breath, feel pain and increase our chance of hurting ourselves. Conidering that yoga is a way to deepen our connection through our physical experience, if we hurt ourselves, we hit a roadblock in that process.
Our edge can shift, often quickly. We may begin our practice feeling sluggish and unmotivated, but as we begin to couple our breath to our body, bring heat into our tissues and reach out of our daily habitual postures, we may find that our edge expands and begins to open. The opposite is also true. We may arrive on the mat full of great intentions for an ambitious session and realize that once we begin, we need to back off and go easier than we had originally planned.
The changes of how we feel move not only throughout our practice but from day to day, week to week and year to year. It’s a great disservice to ourselves to hit autopilot and go through the motions. Our lives ebb and flow…things are constantly shifting and our experience varies. It is through paying attention to how this shift is taking place that deepens our practice. When we listen to what our being is telling us from a deeper place, we set foot on the path of transformation.
And only YOU can determine your edge. No yoga instructor has the ability to tell you how hard you should or shouldn’t be pushing. Nobody knows your body better than you. Nobody. So get to know yourself a little better by listening to all the cues it’s sending you.
Get curious…step up to your edge without pushing beyond it and see if you can avoid the temptation to fly!
