There is no question that yoga is healing. For the past week, I have had a pain in my shoulder that just would not go away. I thought to myself, yup, this is it, the first signs of aging. Nothing I seemed to do helped until I came to class. Somehow with all the stretching and the forward bending and the Trikonasana-ing, the pain went away. But it turns out that part of the pain may have come from the way I am doing Chaturunga. Chaturunga is one of the hardest asanas for me. How to gracefully go from plank, into an open hearted push-up and then bring your chest open for upward facing dog seems very challenging, even though I have been doing this on and off for 12 years. Yesterday, after hundreds of chatarungas, I realized I needed an adjustment: shoulders.

So this is how it goes. You’re in a forward bend, you straighten your back to prepare and you get into plank, legs strong, back straight, butt high but not too high, inner elbows facing each other, hands firmly planted. From this you go down, not too far down, but down, elbows in, close to the body, chest open and, here’s the key, shoulders open. From what I understand, you don’t want to curve in, to look down with your whole body. You want a feeling of openness throughout. Then, with grace, you move up and out of chatarunga and into upward facing dog, and then, smoothly, downward facing dog. Yes?

It’s amazing how many times I have done this Surya Namaskar A and I still am learning. Every time, it seems to be a different sequence. And that’s what keeps yoga interesting, the changes and shifts that are constantly happening. And beyond that, and possibly most importantly, our reaction to those changes and shifts. It’s important, I find, to smile in these moments. And the smile doesn’t have to be outward but to give yourself that sense that it’s ok, that it doesn’t have to be perfect, that there is no perfect, that we’re here to learn and to grow and that we do that every day and sometimes we do it with our shoulders pulled back and our chest open and other times we do it differently. The point is, we’re all in this together, right?