"If you ask all the people in your session to do exactly the same posture in the same manner, it’s almost like asking them to wear the same shoes."
Principles for customization and adaptation of yoga for various uses and needs.
Contents
Adaptation Defined
A General Approach to Adaptation
Key Teaching: Surrendering vs Identifying
Inherent Worthiness & Wholeness
Much More
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To Suggest that Everyone Do Exactly the Same Postures in Exactly the Same Manner is Like Having Everyone Wear the Exact Same Pair of Shoes
We need to open our eyes to the fact that if you ask all the people in your session to do exactly the same posture in the same manner, it’s almost like asking them to wear the same shoes. They can do that but oftentimes, it does not really fit their needs.
Adaptation Defined
In contrast to yoga teachings that are considered generally applicable, adaptation involves some level of customization to accommodate a need. Adaptation implies the teachings are chosen, varied or applied to respond to a particular situation — an injury, condition, limitation, or any reason at all.
While a sequence or philosophy teaching that will be used with all students in a drop-in class might be considered general yoga teachings, advising a pregnant student about poses to avoid would be an adaptation. And adaptation can be the development of a class plan to accommodate students in a specialized class, such as yoga for seniors or a class designed for students with scoliosis, anxiety or chronic pain.
Examples
Yoga offers many tools to promote various experiences and effects. For example:
Focusing on the breath begins to settle the mind and draw awareness into the body so that we can become more conscious of what we’re feeling.
Standing poses help to bring awareness into the body and to bring a balance of strength and openness.
Balancing poses increase a sense of presence, clarity, and calmness.
Mantras support concentration and contemplation of higher states of consciousness.
Meditation may help to reduce stress, lessen the effects of discomfort and support development of such powerful states of being as compassion, love, patience, generosity and forgiveness.
And each tool may be adapted for various situations.
“Average” and “Normal” are Pointless; We are Unique
The range of human variations… is enormous. It is pointless to say what an average is, to define what normal is… when there are so many ways that we are unique… We have seen that the science of human variation and the reality of ultimately reaching compression mean that you cannot do every posture, and trying to go past where your body can take you will lead to injury, not progress.
A General Approach to Adaptation
Introduction
Yoga practice is a process of discovery. Through curiosity and sustained attention, the practice unfolds, offering experiences and learning that may be referred to as becoming more “enlightened.”
As with yoga in general, adaptation is a process of self-exploration and empowerment. Practices can be adjusted and adapted based on the objective or intention. We can adapt a single pose, a sequence of poses, or an entire class to meet various needs. “The why informs the how.” [source] In the article, Create a Potent Practice for Every Individual: The Art and Science of Yoga Sequencing, Olga Kabel gives three examples of using the same poses to produce entirely different results.
Foundational Considerations
When considering adaptation, a general approach may include the following:
See and reflect each person’s inherent worthiness and wholeness.
Seek to empower and focus more on what a student can do than what she can’t do.
Draw from the many powerful yoga techniques beyond poses including breathwork, meditation and visualization, chanting, and philosophy.
Address and integrate the person’s various aspects or koshas.
Employ practice techniques (here) that take into account the importance of inner attention, the role of the nervous system, determining the energetic need in each situation, and other considerations.
Encourage students to become aware of daily life patterns that contribute to imbalances.
We go deeper into many of these principles here. But first, we might consider what’s actually happening on a bodily level when we’re practicing yoga, icing an injury, or taking a pill.
Offering Invitations & Setting Conditions
A relaxation practice, ice pack, herbal supplement, pharmaceutical drug, or chiropractic adjustment may prompt the body to heal, but it is, in fact, the body’s intelligence that does the actual healing. In other words, all healing is self-healing. (See more in "Context: How Healing Happens" in this lesson.)
Meditation practice offers another example. We can't "make" a meditative state happen. Rather, we do things that increase the likelihood of "dropping in" to a meditative state (dhyana). We find a comfortable seat and straighten the spine, close the eyes and draw the attention inward (pratyahara), do a breath practice or guided meditation, recite a mantra or listen to binaural beats, all in an effort to invite a balancing of the nervous system, a slowing of our brain waves and increased access to inner knowing.
An "ah-ha" experience tends to arise when force is relinquished, and in its place, invitational language is used both by the teacher and the student (in their mind and in their attitude toward the body).
And what exactly are we inviting? We’re inviting curiosity, attention, and neutrality as we experiment with various conditions and observe the effects. Rather than dictate experiences, we instead recognize that setting conditions and observing results is, in fact, the only thing that anyone can do. Even if an action we take appears to prompt a resolution of symptoms or the correction of an imbalance, in reality we set the conditions while the body’s physiology made the changes. With this more accurate recognition of how healing happens, we may be more prepared to effectively optimize conditions.
Key Teaching: Surrendering vs Identifying
Surrender Not to an Illness or an Identity, But Simply to This Moment
It is easy to fall into the error of misinterpreting the arising of illness as some kind of malfunction in your body, or as something that you have done or failed to do… The physical body is always susceptible to all kinds of influences. If something goes wrong with the body, then it becomes doubly important not to judge yourself or to say that you created it. If you are ill, whatever illness it may be, the most effective thing you can do is to surrender to what is, which does not mean surrender to what you call the illness. Surrender means acceptance. Acceptance initiates healing. The foundation for healing is to accept this moment as it is. In this moment, the so-called illness may manifest either as pain, discomfort, or some kind of disability. This is what you surrender to. You never surrender to the idea of illness. You don’t say, “I must surrender to the fact that I have [an illness],” or, even worse, “I must surrender to the fact that I have this incurable condition.” All you surrender to is the present moment, whatever the body manifests in the present moment. That is what is; that is what you accept. With that kind of surrender, a doorway opens into the transcendent dimension, and that’s where the power of manifestation really comes through. So, if you are diagnosed with an illness, you don’t deny the illness, but you also don’t dwell on the concept of illness and build an identity around it. The ego will use anything for an enhanced sense of identity, and it will happily (or unhappily) use the idea of illness. It can then become incorporated into your sense of self, especially if it is a prolonged illness. The body is as it is right now. That’s fine. The physical body is not who you are. Your true essence is timeless and without form.
Inherent Worthiness & Wholeness
A revolutionary and invaluable foundation of yoga is the explicit principle that every person is a perfect and whole expression of the one infinite source. Everything starts from the person’s inherent worthiness and wholeness just as she is.
While a person may be experiencing pain or disability, it is understood that beneath these qualities of experience is the whole and perfect Self that is never damaged.
From a sense of inherent worthiness and wholeness, the student embarks on a journey. The journey itself comes to be experienced as “a homecoming to a place of inner balance, awareness, and wholeness.”
The tools of yoga are used “to open the appropriate doorway to the student’s own potential for health, healing, and awakening, all of which is already present.” (Joseph LePage)
It is understood that the journey may lead to any number of outcomes, such as healing underlying imbalance, relief from symptoms, or more tranquility in living with a chronic condition.
Seeing Each Person as a Reflection of the Intelligence of Source Energy
Yoga therapy sees each person as an expression and reflection of the infinite possibilities and intelligence of the source energy. – Joseph LePage, Yoga Journal, 5 Steps to Create a Yoga Therapy Program for Your Students link
Personalizing vs. Conforming
I’m always curious about the ways that the term “accessible yoga” is understood and translated by the yoga community. What I’ve noticed recently is that some yoga teachers talk about making yoga accessible to their students in an effort to help them fit into their yoga classes—to help them conform. Some teachers only offer different variations of a practice when a student can’t do the “full expression” of a pose. In this case, the adapted practice is offered as some kind of consolation prize. That’s not exactly what I had in mind when I started teaching accessible yoga. My goal is, and has always been, to make the tools of yoga accessible to people in order to support them in personalizing the practice, so that they can find an inner sanctuary… The most fundamental teaching of yoga is that we are all full and complete spiritual beings. Yoga begins with this positive assertion… The yoga practices are all designed to lead us back home to ourselves… In a famous quote from Michelangelo, he explained, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” That’s the image that comes to mind when I think about accessible yoga. As teachers, we are supporting people as they reconnect with themselves—as they free themselves from the grasp of a culture that is always telling them they are not enough. We help them to discover and embrace what’s already there. – Jivana Heyman, Accessible Yoga, Embracing Difference, Not Conformity: What Does Accessible Yoga Really Mean? link
“Issues do not stop you from being whole”
I’ve noticed that when people ask me about how to heal, they are coming at this question from the angle of believing that they are not in a healing state. And what keeps them in this place of lack is the idea that there is something about themselves that is insufficient, is broken, or is not good enough and they want to heal that aspect of themselves. When they do this, I try to remind them that no matter how they feel about themselves, their soul knows they are already whole. Body + Soul = Wholeness… While it’s true that there may be physical, emotional or energetic issues going on in your life, these issues do not stop you from being whole. – Anita Moorjani, Healing is Not The Target link
Empathy vs. Fixing
We think because we feel another’s pain as if it were our own—and find it easy to put ourselves in other people’s shoes—that it’s our responsibility to fix that pain. We believe we need to offer a solution because sitting with the pain is uncomfortable for us and for them. We want to rescue them. We think advice is what they need. Turns out, this isn’t true… When I thought about it, I realized that when I share my inner world with someone, I don’t want a solution, unless I explicitly ask for one. What I actually want is to be heard… Personally, I share with people because I want to receive support. That support can be as simple as someone looking me in the eye and saying, “I get it.” Letting my pain exist between us and letting it be okay that it’s there. Making me feel less alone. The need to be seen, heard, and understood—the need to matter—is universal. Ironically, when we try to help others by rescuing them, we don’t meet this need at all. In fact, what we’re saying is, “I don’t believe you have the resources you need to find your own solution to this. Here’s what I know, so do this instead.” – Tiny Buddha, Please Don’t Fix Me: What True Empathy Is (And Isn’t) link
Reconsidering Chronic Conditions, Disability, Grief
How can we let chronic illness, incurable disease, disability, and grief galvanize us into greater connection with other species and beings?… What if the ways our bodies adjusted to trauma, trespass, and illness were not universally problematic, but often deeply creative? – Sophie Strand, Science & Nonduality, The Body is a Doorway link
Much More
See much more in the full lesson here.
We’ve recently expanded this lesson. If you’ve downloaded it from Yoga Teacher Central in the past, as always, you’re welcome to get a free update. Simply log in and select the lesson in the Download Library.
For related lessons, see the Health Education & Yoga Adaptation Hub for subjects such as these:
Yoga Adaptation Principles (lesson excerpts above)
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Shelly, your posts are always so amazing, Thanks for including me in this one!