The Change in a Yoga Pose That Changed My Perspective on Productivity

For the first 20 years I was practicing yoga, I struggled to get my hands to the floor in certain poses. The solution offered to me almost universally by different teachers was to “bring the floor to me” by putting blocks under my hands.

So that’s what I did. Whether it was a downward dog, a lunge, or a side angle pose, I dutifully put blocks under my hands to “reach the floor.” I even did this through my teacher training.

The Breakthrough Moment

Everything changed when I took my first Katonah Yoga class at The Studio in New York City. We were in a side angle pose, a lateral lunge in which the front knee is bent to 90-degrees and the front hand is inside the front foot. As was my practice, I had my hand on a block.

My teacher Abbie Galvin, who owns The Studio, told me to remove the block from under my hand.

I was resistant; I protested that I couldn’t reach my hand to the floor.

Abbie explained to me that by keeping my hand on the block in that pose, I was putting too much strain on my shoulder and not actually getting into my hip joint to work my legs, which was the point of the pose.

This tracked with the many shoulder injuries I had sustained through yoga over the years.

She showed me how by stepping a little wider in my stance I could actually get the proper angle in my hip and knee joints, and reach my hand to the floor.

A Change in Perspective

Katonah Yoga pays attention to both the archetypes of the poses and the sacred geometry of their construction.

When you change your angle, your change your perspective. And when you change your perspective, everything changes.

It’s fair to say that this was a moment that changed not only my practice, but my understanding of productivity and life in general.

When “Support” Suffocates

The purpose of yoga poses is not to contort yourself into weird shapes, but to create containers that facilitate the breath.

Each pose has a sacred geometry, and with the block under my hand, I had lost the sacred geometry of the pose. Instead, I was putting too much strain on shoulders, closing off my lungs, and preventing myself from accessing my hips and building leg strength.

In other words, the “support” of the block was suffocating me — preventing the flow of oxygen into my lungs — and preventing me from building stability.

A Strong Foundation Frees Up Capacity

The metaphor of the body as a house illuminates the importance of building a pose from the foundation.

In a house, the first floor — the foundation — supports the second floor. Being supports doing.

By putting my hands on blocks, I was trying to do the pose with my upper body, which was creating too much strain and injury.

I learned that when you access the hip joint and create stability through the base of a pose, you free up the torso. The lungs become more available, facilitating deeper and more nourishing breaths, which regulates the nervous system.

When you build from a solid foundation, you’re no longer efforting so hard to “do” the yoga pose; instead, you find the stability and security to be in the pose.

This is the meaning of asana, the Sanskrit word for yoga poses: effortless effort.

Beyond the Yoga Pose

The core principle at play here is that when you strengthen the foundation, you free up capacity.

This is true not just in a yoga pose, but in life in general.

Even the greatest capacity is only theoretical without a solid foundation of safety, security, structures, and systems.