If you cant do the posture one side...?

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Morris
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue May 31, 2011 3:18 am
Location: Sweden

If you cant do the posture one side...?

Post by Morris »

Should you do a variation on the stiffer side but the full posture on the other side?
This is mainly as issue for students in hips postures.

Thank you
Maria
Bernie
Posts: 1293
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:25 am
Location: Vancouver

Asymmetry

Post by Bernie »

You do what you can. We are all asymmetric to some degree. While it is nice to try to regain balance between the two sides of our body, sometimes we just have to accept that our left side and our right side are always going to be different. In the same way in a marriage, the two partners start to be more and more alike, there will always be differences, and we need to honour those differences.

The most common variation we see in yoga is in the spine: the effect is termed scoliosis. (There was a discussion on this earlier: you may want to check it out for some ideas.)

For asymmetry in the hips, yes - do what you can on the "tighter" side. There are two schools of thought on this: one is to only do a little on the open side until the tight side is equally open, the other thought is to work both sides to their comfortable limits. I tend to favour this latter philosophy. After all, if you are right handed, your right arm is stronger than the left: does this mean you should not work to make your right side even stronger? Most athletes would agree: they make their strong side even stronger. Of course, you don't have to go to the extremes that athletes do - they do become very asymmetric, to the point of being unbalanced, but the fact is, we do have a strong side, a more open side - that is the way we are built.

From an energy perspective, we want all of our channels to be as open as possible - so why not work the open side as much as you can, while still trying to get the tight side to loosen up too. This will mean different variations for different sides. That's life!

Cheers
Bernie
Morris
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue May 31, 2011 3:18 am
Location: Sweden

Post by Morris »

Thank you for the answer! You are great. :-)
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