How I went from hating to keeping this one yoga -pose

A year ago, if you had asked me what I thought of Bridge -Pose, I would have said: “Ugh, you mean that thing I do in class while I really just lie on my back and wait for Savasana?”

Because let’s be honest, Bridge Pose is an easy attitude to hate.

It is actually a false promise of relaxation. The only time I have ever practiced – well, fake that is practiced – was bridge during the lesson in my yoga studio. In the last minutes the teacher would like to be on our back on our back and I would feel a flutter of excitement, assuming that I would soon be relaxed in a happy baby or back -lying turn – only to find out that I had to assert actual physical efforts.

If I pressed my feet in the mat and I would raise my hips as high in the air as high as possible. The thoughts that ran through my head were always frustration (“When will the teacher take us out of this?!”) Or defeat (“My hips that raise much higher. Am I too old for this?”). No amount of squeezing in my lower back, buttock muscles and hamstrings would support my body for more than a few seconds, so I would collapse flat on the mat, stare at the ceiling and cherish in my observed failure.

Only when I took a break from the yoga class – and treated a new source of physical discomfort – that my feelings shifted.

I have known for a while that sitting for a long time the hip flexors tent. But there was a point that I had to learn from experience. When I got up from my desk, I felt my hip muscles pull tightly under my skin. When I took a walk after work, my steps were shorter, limited by the tension in my hips, and then I felt the muscles pulsing along my upper thighs.

After a few weeks of this, I rolled out my yoga mat at home. If I have muscle pain or discomfort, I tend to avoid instruction from an external source, whether it is a studio -Yogales or YouTube video. Instead, I move intuitively. Sometimes that seems to lie on the floor on the chair. On this specific day it went into my back with my knees bent and feet on the floor. I felt the muscles I wanted to stretch. I just didn’t know how to reach them, exactly.

I experimented with different movements, fluctuated from the outside and tilted my pelvis forward and backwards. I realized that pressing my feet into the mat helped me to do this effortlessly. Soon I felt comfortable to lift my hips so light of the mat from the mat, I felt the satisfying piece in my hip muscles I needed.

From the floor I turned my head aside and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My hips were lifted, albeit low on the floor, my arms were tense, not straight and on my sides, and my gaze should have been to the ceiling instead of my mirror image. No matter how I did it, it struck me that I was in Bridge Pose. And it felt fantastic.

Since then I have become a dedicated bridge pose fan, who practices on my bedroom floor before I go to sleep, on my towel on the beach, even on a massage table after a 50-minute session. There was something about removing the pressure from what I thought Bridge would look like, let me find my way there. Without a teacher, instructions or someone else to compare myself, I could finally understand that not everyone’s pose will look the same – even my own Bridge pose from year to year or from moment to moment. By concentrating on how it feels, I removed the obstacles that loved me a pretty kickass piece.

The more I think about it, the more life lessons I recognize in this experience. That it doesn’t matter how something looks as much as it feels. That I don’t have to judge something – or myself – on my false expectations. And that I can trust myself and intuition my way forward.