Balance on your hands? Probably easier than parenting a toddler...
This looks like a post about a fancy yoga pose, but it’s not.
It’s a pose about being embodied, aware and conscious of ourselves in a given moment, with a nervous system that is able to respond as and where needed.
Do you hurt yourself a lot? Run into things, trip over things? I have had like 4 minor household injuries in the last week. I know this is related to feeling fragmented, mentally and emotionally. I am being pulled in different directions, needing to multitask, and feeling out of balance.
In our physical and sensory body we have a ‘proprioceptive system’ that allows our joints and muscles to send messages to our brain about position, pressure, motion etc. in order to be coordinated and effective in our movement. This is affected by a growing abdomen, joint laxity and sleep deprivation - amongst other things! Firstly, pregnancy changes our body so quickly we can lose a sense of familiarity with where we are in space. We’re not used to having a bump out front. Then it disappears in a matter of hours/days/weeks. So, it’s no wonder in postpartum it’s common to report “I don’t feel like myself anymore”. Not only has your identity changed, you are literally rewiring the connections between brain and musculoskeletal systems, to respond appropriately for the size and position of your new postpartum body in space.
Yoga asana helps us to refine and rewire those connections, so we can be more conscious about how and where we place ourselves in the world. It also helps us practice being conscious of our thinking and feeling body.
Our eldest is nearly three, and we are beginning the journey of forming our family’s approach and philosophy to ‘parenting’ in a more active way than we’ve had to thus far. Up until now, thankfully, deciding how to respond to him and build a relationship with him has been fairly straightforward, common sense or fairly low level in challenge. But that is definitely starting to change! I see the experience of being conscious or reactive as a parent as similar to my experience in and as a body in day to day life. Less conscious = gripping/holding on to emotions, sucking in our core perhaps because deep down we feel we take up too much space, or ‘should’ be or look differently. We might have self doubt, therefore grasping for answers or opinions from external sources. Or, we might cultivate a deep, wise sense of what is right, and deploy that in a responsive, effective way. We might communicate and affirm boundaries, and allow for difficult feelings. We might brace or contract when we need strength, and soften and melt when we need more ease.
Crow pose, or ‘bakasana’, is a physically demanding pose. But we can use it to train conscious awareness of how we are being and responding, moment to moment. Are we rigid, tight, fearful, fragmented, or gripping? Or are we responsive, fluid, aware and alert to what’s required? We could be talking about the body, parenting, or our attitude to life in general…
So, in crow, we need strong deep core and hip flexors, to flex the hip and adduct it deeply. We need strong shoulder girdle muscles to protract the scapula and flex the spine whilst bearing our whole body weight. Hip flexors can be both tight and weak in pregnancy and postpartum due to the anterior weight nudging us into a more lordotic curve in our lower back, and also lots more sitting in early motherhood for settling, feeding, resting etc.
Next week on Heartfelt Online there is a practice that works up to crow in under 15 minutes, incorporating the training we need to do in different parts of the body to be more aware and able to embody this asana. But there is so much on offer in the journey to get there, regardless of how it ends up.
Crow pose requires integration of a range of physical demands coming together in one moment of balance, concentration, awareness and lightness - of body and spirit. Yoga practices like this one, regardless of whether I manage the pose - help me feel more integrated, responsive and alert in my life throughout the day.
It doesn’t actually matter whether you lift your feet and balance on your hands. This is bloody hard to do - we haven’t really evolved to be weight bearing on our arms much. Plus, it’s an act of trust to lean your face towards the ground like this. It’s more about can you wholly concentrate on what is physically required to be able to try, and visualise leaning forward? Just like how I try to pretend I am ‘unruffled’, calm and in control when my eldest is pressing allllllll the buttons.
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