How to Resolve Discomfort in a Yoga Pose — and in Life

Before a recent yoga class I taught, a student told me that her hands hurt whenever she put them down on the mat and put pressure on them.

The student showed me how she modified her hand position to ease the discomfort. I could instantly see how her modification would eventually lead her to sustain injuries down the road. Within the first few minutes of class I could also see why she was having issues with her hands. Everything in the body is connected, and the source of pain is rarely the cause of pain.

Another student told me he avoided certain poses because the poses hurt his knee. Within the first few minutes I could see what he was doing that would lead to pain in his knee.

Avoidance Builds Resistance.

It’s common for students to say that they “don’t do a pose” because of physical discomfort.

Having dealt with physical pain for most of my life — and continuing to struggle with movement issues —I empathized with both of these students, as well as the dozens of other students who share their stories of physical discomfort.

For many years in my own practice, I resorted to “modifications” designed to ameliorate the pain. I’ve learned that avoiding the poses that create discomfort doesn’t serve any long-term goal.

The body habituates to how we use it. The more we avoid putting our body in certain poses, the more we reinforce the story that those positions “aren’t safe” and the more the body resists those poses.

Avoidance builds resistance.

It’s Not the Pose. It’s the Technique.

My teacher Abbie Galvin often says that “it’s not the pose, but how you’re doing it.”

Everything can be done with the right technique.

As I do at the start of all of my classes, I focused on teaching techniques as we went through the warm up and the foundational poses. I show my students how to align themselves correctly and how to check their alignment using objective tools like blocks.

Through adjustments and assistance, I helped them feel in their bodies the difference between how they habitually held themselves in a pose and the correct alignment.

By the middle of class, the student with hand issues was able to hold a downward dog without the discomfort. The student with knee issues was able to do the pose he avoided without feeling pain.

Both were able to flow through the sequence of poses more smoothly. And their poses looked different.

It was immensely rewarding for me as a teacher to see how the shapes of their poses changed and how they had more fun without fear of injury. Without wasting their frustration energy on the basic poses, they were more open to playing and experimenting with challenging balance poses,

Beyond the Yoga Mat: Discomfort in Life

Whether in a yoga class, a gym workout, relationships, business, or other aspects of life, we are going to have poses, movements, tasks, and moments that are uncomfortable — maybe even painful. Sometimes that discomfort is physical, and sometimes it’s emotional or even cognitive.

Our natural tendency as humans is to avoid the discomfort. We find a way around it, often by compensating and leaning on a strength.

There may be cases where we can find an alternative way to get the result we’re after. But in the long term, that doesn’t serve us — it simply builds the resistance to doing the thing.

The body and brain are highly adaptable. If we train in solid techniques, we will eventually find that we can do things we previously thought were unattainable, and that they become a lot more fun in the process.

Instead of avoiding discomfort, we can view it as an invitation to investigate whether we can learn a better technique.