I was used to having the most advanced practice in the room. I rocked difficult arm balances, twisted myself into complicated knots and bent myself into stunning scorpions with little effort. Thirteen years as a competitive gymnast had rendered me strong and flexible, which made for easy asana assimilation. I found my way to Ashtanga while bumming around India and advanced rapidly through both the first and second series. I was well into third when life threw me one of those horrific stumbling blocks that Pluto cycles tend to bring.
I woke up in the middle of the night in the worst pain I’d ever experienced. Lightning bolts shot down my neck, gathered in angry clusters beneath my shoulder blade and radiated down my left arm, which for some reason wouldn’t straighten.
The pain was so intense and so overwhelming, I couldn’t source it. I had no idea where it was coming from or what was going on. Nothing had happened. I went to sleep healthy, and woke up handicapped. In the days to come, I lost sensation in my left thumb. I couldn’t lift my arm more than a couple of inches away from my side, or depend on it for simple things like opening a bottle of water, grasping a doorknob or holding on to anything.
I whimpered aloud as I crawled across town from acupuncture to energy work, thinking an etheric shift or an emotional release would be the soothing salve my angry body needed. While I got no relief, I amassed a string of consistent theories as to what was going on: compressed discs (anywhere from three to five) smashing the nerves, which were in a non-stop freak-out. I prayed decompression into my vertebrae, imagined space into my spine, intended the pain away and was truly, utterly shocked when nothing worked.
“This might just be physiological,” my bodyworker told me.
Impossible, I stubbornly maintained, sure of my own abilities to heal myself by tapping into the emotions beneath the sensation and clearing the karma crouched inside of the spasms.
I longed for my Ashtanga practice, needing it more than ever during this extended moment of existential upheaval. I attempted a sad semblance of sun salutations at home, and cried out in pain as my left arm collapsed under me in chaturanga. I could hardly lift my head upright, let alone lift my chin skyward. Forward bends were impossible, as the slightest tilt of my neck sent my arm into paroxysms of outrageous pain. Asana simply wasn’t an option. My body was in revolt.
The pain persisted and self-inquiry wasn’t cutting it. My left arm remained cranky and useless; it woke me up at three in the morning screaming at the top of its lungs. The enraged bundle of nerves hiding behind my shoulder blade was gnawing away at my sanity. I was faced with the terrifying truth of the matter: it was physiological.
I called Dr. Sadeghi.
“Oh my God, Dani,” said Karen, the receptionist, upon watching me drag myself into the office, umpteen days of agony-infused
sleeplessness seeping from every overwhelmed pore.
“I need to get back to my practice,” I mumbled as Dr. Sadeghi examined me.
It had been twenty-two days since I’d been able to comb my own hair, and I was still jonesing to get back on my mat, back to second series, back to badass.
“You’re in way too much pain,” said Dr. Sadeghi.
He injected five shots of Procane into my shoulder to shut the nerves off completely, handed me a prescription I swore I’d never fill, and referred me to a (brilliant) chiropractor. Dr. Perry took X-rays and gave me a complete examination. The discs were compressed. The curvature of my upper spine had reversed itself.
While no one thing happened, years of overdeveloping the front of my chest with vinyasa after vinyasa, while avoiding the muscles between my shoulder blades with my überbendy lower back had taken its devastating toll on my spine.
It was going to take time and effort to heal.
“When can I get back on the mat?” I asked.
“Let’s get you out of pain first.”
He prescribed a regimen of traction and physical therapy.
Two weeks later, aching to empower myself back into my own body, I wandered into Julian Walker’s Open Sky yoga class. With Julian’s guidance, I modified up the yin-yang and sat out at least half the class in half lotus.
“For you, sitting still while the class is flowing is your most advanced practice.”
He was right.
Muscling through pain and exhaustion was easy for me – it was my default setting. Holding back, being gentle, modifying, these were unfamiliar waters. I observed a swell of inner turmoil as I crouched low in child’s pose, while the rest of the class ujjayi-ed their way through a flow series around me.
While the class lay on their collective stomachs, opening up their backs in salabhasana (locust) I knelt in camel, tilting my chin skywards, rolling my shoulders back, testing the limitations of my cervical spine and the range of motion it was gifting me for the day. Mid-week, mid-class, I caught a glimpse of space in my neck. I reached back and touched my heels. It felt good to open up my spine and to expand my ribs. I walked my hands up to my knees, remembering this feeling – flexible, strong.
“Careful, Dani,” Julian warned.
The next morning, my lower back was screaming, shrill and wretched, and my neck was once again out. Dr. Perry mentioned something about a direct connection between compression in my neck and in my lower back. A couple more failed camels drove the point home. My ultra-bendy lower back backbends weren’t working for me anymore. I vaguely remembered Maty Erzaty yelling at me in class, telling me I’d one day suffer for back bending so incorrectly. Instead of heeding her warning, I switched yoga studios, opting for an old-school by-any-means necessary-wrench-yourself-into-the-pose approach.
My practice these days is less about regimented asana and more about free-flowing compassion —
for my spine, for my boundaries, for my emotional state, for myself.
Lesson learned: The hard way.
Two months later, I’m still modifying. I’m no longer the advanced Ashtangi kicking asana ass in the front of the room, nor am I even the yogi with the broken wing nursing her way through the peak of injury. For the first time ever I am a beginner, figuring out an entirely new way to inhabit my body and to align myself in each pose. I no longer back-bend; I sit up tall on my knees while the rest of the class arches back. I draw up out of my hips, engage my thighs, roll my shoulders back and lengthen my neck, bringing awareness into that long-forgotten, underdeveloped space between my shoulder blades, being patient, moving slightly and subtly where I used to bend big and bold.
My practice these days is less about regimented asana and more about free-flowing compassion – for my spine, for my boundaries, for my emotional state, for myself. Expanding toward the edges of the otherwise murky confines of this transformation, I am shifting my entire approach to yoga, to movement, to relationship, to reality. No more barreling through, no more beating myself up, no more six-days-a-week early morning “no pain, no gain” maniacal disciplined acrobatics.
Halasana (plow) and headstand are but distant memories, poses I may never indulge in again. I still can’t support myself in chaturanga. The damage my nerves sustained while the discs were compressing remains. I put my knees down while I lower my chest to the floor and even still, I collapse inches away from my mat. And it’s challenging. I hate being weak. I hate being clumsy and awkward. I miss flowing and gliding and touching those magical places where my Ashtanga flow used to take me. And yet, this is where I am: beginning again for the first time, ten years into my yoga practice; honoring my body, honoring my spine, honoring lessons that this challenge continues to bestow upon me. I still miss my practice,but I’m finding my way to a new one, a gentler one, an infinitely more difficult one.
Scorpion was easy. Kneeling in chaturanga is so very (very, very) hard.
Dani Katz the girl in the mismatched yoga clothes, wincing her way through sun salutations while trying not to write song lyrics in her head. Back to the breath, Dani…ever and always back to the breath. somethingdani.com
By Dani Katz
