Trying to put your body into poses or asanas that are new to it will quickly bring emotions ranging from frustration to apathy. It really does have to be the right time for you to be ready for something that works on so many levels and not throw the towel in. This usually means you have lived long enough to have experienced the loss, grief, disappointment and shock that we all get to have as a shared experience by some point – and recognise that everything else you have tried to cover or cure this hasn’t worked. Despite this, it can still be very hard to pursue this path. We half-inhabit our bodies most of the time, and can be very reluctant to come all the way back to them.
Yoga forces you to slow down. When you do, the things that you have been ignoring will surface. This is no different than mediation – and why meditation is so hard. So it helps if you can treat your yoga practice as a meditation practice from the beginning. This means that when you are attempting to recognise and adjust a habitual movement pattern, you also notice the emotions that this challenge brings – along with the reaction to this emotion. Just as with seated meditation, you begin to notice things. It is not easy. You need to keep going until you have that lightbulb moment of clarity and understanding that gets you hooked on yoga.
To help to integrate the meditative aspect of your practice, I recommend ‘stretch meditation’ – something I devised from my own practice and the times I have spent at vipassana meditation retreats. It strips a yoga pose all the way down to a bare stretch and takes it to that point where it generates a really strong sensation. You are tasked then with observing how you react to this strong sensation – and whether this helps or hinders the sensation of the stretch. You can do this with any stretch and have the benefit of multitasking your meditation with your flexibility training!