Postural Alignment Yoga

The body is the only machine for which there are no spare parts” –Hermann M. Biggs

My friend Maria and I went to a postural alignment yoga class. We arrived and saw the instructor, Alan, wearing a navy t-shirt and navy sweatpants. He told us to take off our shoes and “come on in” to the studio. We started by going around the room, each explaining why we were there. The room was full of tight bodies;hips in pain, frozen shoulders, sore backs and bad necks. The ages ranged from 23 to about 70.

I sat in the room with all these adults who had undergone one or several surgeries. Maybe the bulging disk was a warning sign to me to take care of this problem before the only way to fix it was surgery. Alan stressed, however, that it wasn’t too late for those who had surgery to be able to better manage their pain.

We took turns going to the front of the room and having Alan look at our posture. When it was my turn he had me take a couple steps then stop and stand in place. He said, “Look down at your feet. What do you see?” I looked down and realized my right foot was turned out slightly to one side. Was I really always standing off-balance and not able to tell?

As soon as someone stood at the front of the room the group began shouting out “One of your shoulders is lower than the other!” or “your foot is turned in!” as if the first to spot the misalignment would win a prize.

Alan then taught us some postural alignment exercises. We began by lying on our backs, palms pointed up. Alan had us extend one leg straight and bend the other one to our chest and clasp behind the flexed knee. We rotated our ankles to the right, to the left and flexed our toes, all while making sure the motion came from the ankle and not the knee.

Alan had us all stand with our backs against the wall and press the small of our backs and back of our thighs into the wall. I slid down the wall to a sitting position, hands at my sides. We stayed here for a minute before standing up.

For the next exercise, I put a small rectangular pillow between my thighs and pressed against it. We squeezed our butts twenty times, hands on our butts to feel it working, then repeated. My thighs quivered.

Alan had us put our hands in “golfers grip”; fingers curled, knuckles flexed, and thumbs extended. We raised our arms out to shoulder levels and circled them back and forth twenty times. My arms became fatigued after a couple arm circles.

He came over and looked down at me lying on the ground. “Belly relaxed, shoulders against the floor, smile bright.” He smiled. I smiled.

I went to the next yoga class with my mother. When we introduced ourselves and explained our problems, mine and hers were almost identical. People had often said to me, “You got your neck pain from your mother.” Was this really possible? Few musculoskeletal problems are genetic. We may, however, learn incorrect ways to sit, stand, walk and sleep based on what we see our parents do, unconsciously or consciously.

As I watched the women around me go under the knife for knee surgery, back surgery and neck surgery I had once thought this was a part of getting older. After the class, however, I realized it didn’t have to be that way. I could take control of the pain and get my body back.

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