Necessity and '60%' Yoga

Donna and I began attending yoga class about eight years ago, largely due to health concerns. Doctors wanted her to have surgery on her spine to correct a troubling stress injury. The prospect of surgery scared us enough that we were soon looking for every alternative we could find.

We became regulars at a chiropractor's office, one who specialized in the treatment of athletic injuries, though Donna's injury was more work related. He recommended regular massage, so we found a gifted massage therapist. We often drove to an acupuncture school where we learned the basics of Chinese medicine, and she found a little relief there. All these treatments served to strengthen her muscles and joints, and relieve stress.

We heard about a weekly restorative yoga class at a nearby church. My doctor encouraged me also to take better care of myself, to get regular exercise, and because I was driving anyway, I joined Donna for the class, discovering quickly that my body liked this restorative pampering and relaxation. The yoga style we first learned was called Svaroopa, and I remember using lots of props: cushions, blocks and straps (bondage?) to hold certain poses, allowing us to surrender more deeply into them.

A few months later, we decided to relocate to shorten our commute, giving us more time to get our domestic things in order, and just plain have a life outside the rush hour traffic congestion. After our move, we re-thought our health care, finding a new chiropractor just a couple blocks away, complete with an acupuncturist and massage therapists regularly using his extra office space.

Turns out our new chiropractor has treated many yoga instructors and students for years. He recommended an instructor who herself began practicing yoga years before, because of a horse riding injury.

We began enjoying her classes at a new studio for us, learning more about yoga as a healing practice for our bodies and minds - and also - very important - how to take care of yourself in class.

If a teacher doesn't offer alternative postures, or suggest backing out of uncomfortable positions, or encourage you to honor your body's abilities, then you're on your own, you need to do these things for yourself.

It's very easy to want to please a yoga teacher in a yoga class, in part because they create a safe place to learn outside your comfort zone, to stretch your limits, doing so in a compassionate and forgiving way. And the safe place is central to learning the practice, a learning that takes years. We have so few truly non-judgmental spaces in our cities and towns, that this freedom at the yoga studio - to just be - is refreshing, an oasis and balm to the endless hustle and stress outside.

We soon found our two weekly basic Iyengar classes with Lori were making a significant, if gradual, improvement in Donna's strength and range of motion, and in my own flexibility and sense of well being as well. The Iyengar approach, as taught by Lori, was the perfect transition from the purely restorative to a more active style for us, with the easy flow between postures serving to get us moving more comfortably and breathing more deeply in the classes.

I got some razzing from my brothers about turning myself into pretzels and getting all new age-y around them, as was to be expected. But when I noticed them complaining about the inevitable aches and pains of aging, I was able to offer a couple exercises like the cat-cow and variations on long deep breathing. They felt some immediate effect, and soon backed off from their initial skepticism.

It was during this time that I came up with the idea of 60% Yoga. In this approach, it didn't matter what style of yoga was being taught, only that the teacher encouraged each student to think of the experience as their own personalized class. Each student is always responsible for taking care of themselves, backing out of uncomfortable poses, checking in with the teacher whenever they need any kind of help.

The 60% figure is the result of two self scores. You get 50% just for showing up, starting with a credit rather than a deficit. And you're required to attempt only 10% of what the teacher is suggesting, thus 60% total. The showing up is key, and 10% is never too much to ask, the threshold always providing an easy permission to begin as modestly and gently as you wish.

It's important to understand that a yoga practice is about showing up, becoming more present in your body, in your interactions with others, in your better estimations of yourself. If you begin with 10% and hold that as a baseline, then the time will come when you'll naturally adjust what that 10% means for you. Each class truly becomes YOUR class.

I am an often lazy yogi. We've been at this still new practice for over eight years now. Donna has almost 100% range of motion back, and much less pain. We've taken up dance classes for a couple seasons (something that never could have happened without the yoga) and have several new projects we're looking to immerse ourselves in,even entering a new graduate school course of study.

When we found ourselves in yoga teacher training a year ago, along with an enviably younger and truly enthusiastic group, my 60% yoga idea required some explanation, so I refined it, just as I was exploring a new style for me, kundalini yoga.

Kundalini is not quite as approachable with the 10% criterion to begin, as it's designed to engage your whole self, keeping you so busy, inwardly and outwardly, that there's little room to think. But I do allow myself as a new student again to take time in the breathing and movements, some days giving it more like 95%, but always respecting the journey I've taken, keeping the 60% Yoga as a kind of beginner's touchstone, one that carries great value for the skeptical and still reluctant parts of me.

I'm grateful for how far I've come with these varieties of yoga, especially since this physical yoga experience was nowhere on my radar of possibility until Donna's injury.

We're both much healthier now, with reasonable strength, endurance, even a few decent dance moves, and great yoga friends, some of whom started as we did, with very little interest beyond feeling better or tagging along with a spouse, without much more than a 10% capacity to begin. Some exercises and poses are still uncomfortable, but I have my own inner permission to back off and take a pass when that suits me. I do find it interesting how some poses that were beyond me at the beginning are now a piece of cake - tree pose for instance. I could not for the life of me maintain any consistent balance on one leg, and now I hold myself still as long as I wish. My 10% became 11%, then more, until it all became easier as I kept showing up - at class, in the poses, in the breathing, in my life. And the idea of surgery for Donna was laid aside a long time ago. There are far better choices, and yoga offers some surprising new ways of thinking and being, in addition to the health benefits over time. A great yoga instructor is worth going out of your way for. Find someone you can trust, and your life will change - for the better.