Sky Rockets in Flight
Being adjusted in yoga…ahhhhhh…you know you want it.
Lay your hands on me, put some good, solid pressure on my limbs, help make my body bend deeper in the pose. Please don’t give me a soft tug. That makes me feel as dirty as a limp handshake does.
I took a class recently in which about ten instructors who were earning their final credentials for yoga teaching certification taught the Vinyasa flow together, each taking their turn cuing a portion of the warrior series. Not only was the class a beautiful, cohesive dance, lead by ten different people with ten different and equally lovely teaching styles, but it meant that there were twenty hands free at any given moment to “get all over” those of us taking the class.
Ten sets of hands to touch and push open and move me where I’m supposed to be? Yes. Please. Later, I referred to it as my Sunday Afternoon Delight. At one point there were three people swarming the area around my mat, waiting to take their turn with the assist on me and my fellow classmates. It was heavenly.
The last person I dated, before he actually took a class and finally came to understand why I am absolutely obsessed with yoga, just didn’t “get” what I meant when I exclaimed, “I got adjusted in class today!” with such excitement and an almost euphoric energy. I’d go on to demonstrate whatever pose it was that I was doing and how the instructor gracefully lengthened my side body, for example, with one soft, swift, smooth assist. Or how the instructor would gently touch the inside of my knee and thus peel open my hips one subtle inch more, causing me to get deeper in the pose. But then he (my ex boyfriend) took a class led by one of our friends, one of the aforementioned ten instructors, and he finally “got adjusted.” From then on, every time I saw him after a yoga class, drenched in sweat and exhausted from a backbreaking workout, he’d beckon, “get over here, I’m gonna adjust you.” (It was a good joke, one he deserves full credit for.) What I’m getting at is how much every person likes, needs, desires to be touched, err, adjusted—but in the right way.
The word touch can be interpreted in different ways, though. The human touch can be an inspiring thing. It can harm or it can help. You can touch a person with your fingers, you can touch a person with your words, you can touch a person with your actions. You can touch a person with your heart.
We all touch others’ lives in many ways: a yoga instructor not only speaks in mindful mantras that we reflect on for days and days, but can guide a practice with their hands as well. Any of us can smile at a stranger on the street who in turn might feel inspired to pick up flowers to show a loved one how important they are. A person’s day may be brightened by a compliment and, so, feel inclined to toss a homeless person a coin. Our touch has a trickle-down effect; it can shape a person’s morning, a week, a life, really.
That yoga friend of mine, the one above, tells a story of one of his first assists in a class in which he botched an adjust job. Where he intended to support the student, he actually knocked her over and she fell to the floor. He was supposed to help her get into and feel the pose more deeply but, instead, he basically took her out (of it). It’s funny now, of course, but at the time he wasn’t laughing. Moral of the story—touch a person right, or don’t do it at all.
This same person has given me one of the best adjustments of my yoga life. In Dhanurasana FLOOR BOW, having prior knowledge that I like to be adjusted hard, so to speak, not fondled lightly, he pulled my limbs up into the air so much that my body formed a U shape. It was incredible. Another instructor friend of mine knows what I like in Eka Pada Rajakapotasana SLEEPING PIGEON POSE: she twists both my upper thighs in toward each other and then pushes down with her body weight on my hips so that the bones touch the floor. Yet another instructor, when I’m in Paschimothanasana SEATED FORWARD FOLD, lays back-to-back on mine and helps me bend so deeply into the pose that my nose touches the ground between my fully extended legs.
I could not physically do these things to this extent without the assist…I have limits. Or maybe I can push a bit further, bend farther than I thought humanly possible? Either way, I crave adjustments—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual—when I walk into a yoga studio. Does that make me a nymphyogomaniac?