You heard me. After seeing “yoga for dudes” workshops and articles about “bro-ga” online, I thought maybe I should teach a “yoga for super-flexy floppy full-splitty fuck-yeah-yoga females” workshop.

I know what you’re thinking. Those bendy contotionistas don’t need help! And if you’re a gumby girl, maybe you think: “hey bitch! I’m the one with the gawkable pretty practice that makes everyone drool; I rock a bona fide standing split, my chest kisses the floor in downward dog, my butt aims for skies in this standing forward fold. In other words, I got this yoga shit. I don’t need your stupid workshop.

Actually, that’s why you do.

Somewhere along this wild crazy yoga road I fear we’ve confused flexibility with the be-all and end-all of yoga practice. Now, I’m not by any means the uber-spiritual yoga yoda who knows the be-all and end-all of anything, let alone yoga, but even looking at the “asana” piece — which let’s face it, most of us are — I come across this unbalanced worship of bizarro bendiness. It’s in the way students talk about the flexi female/former dancer in class — the one hyperextending into the mat behind her, turning out all over the place and with lower ribs arriving three minutes before the rest of her — like she represents all they need and want to be.

I should know. I’m one of those elastic girls, and a former ballet-kid to boot. Now don’t go reaching for your world’s smallest violin– I know my mobility is a gift. I could do kapotasana in my sleep, bend my toes to my head in King pidgeon and Hanumanasana– all thanks to flexible hamstrings and a lower back that would simply move however I demanded. Alignment was for unfortunate tight dudes, not me, not when I could make miracles happen by thrusting my ribs out and disconnecting my upper body from my lower half.

Yoga is often translated as “to yoke” or “to join” but allI I did my first few years practicing was divide and separate. Meanwhile, I couldn’t balance on a parallel foot (irking my first Bikram teachers). Speaking of unstable, I couldn’t do crow pose, headstand, handstand, forearm stand–Indeed, I doubt I could properly “stand” at all. Strength remained something other people had. What I had, were big ol’ backbends, splashy splits and chronically sore lower back muscles (by chronic I mean the soreness was white noise– I barely noticed it was there).

Ashtanga made me notice.

Fortunately, I began stepping deeper and deeper into ashtanga as I came out of the first-time baby haze–both practices (ashtanga and motherhood) asking me to write a story of strength. This ashtanga practice is like working with a relentlessly omniscient mirror: it wouldn’t let me rest on my limber laurels. You want into second series bendy girl? It’s gonna take more than binds and chins to shin — you need to stand up from a back bend and jump back, i.e., strong legs, center, shoulders. There was no way out but through. I had to find whole body connection in backbends, including my legs and feet, joining my upper and lower half– not just when bending back, but when standing up straight. It’s the same thing. And guess what? My lower back soreness disappeared. Better yet, now, in the deepest of backbends, like kapotasana, or those final, creepy looking “reach back and grab your own shins” backbends, I feel something incredible– dots connected along the whole front side of my body, a loop, union– wait for it, I’m going into shit yogis say central channel territory here– ok, you get the point?

And can we talk about strength? This girl who couldn’t do a pull-up to save her life in gym class now feels like she could pick up a car and throw it, all from a forearm stand followed by a jump back, no less. Delusions of heroic grandeur aside, what I love about the ashtanga is how it balances us all out.  In Ashtanga, you can’t just say “pass“— there are jump backs to challenge bendy noodles and forward folds and binds to catch those stiff dudes and oh, supta kurmasana (legs behind head, hands bound, all while hanging on your belly, I know) is a sticking point pose that throws a wrench into just about everybody’s ego. So here’s a shout out for my stiff dudes: that bendy girl you covet– she’s got as much work to do as you (maybe even more).

“You see, we all have to cultivate what we are not.”

Oh bendy girl, those hypnotic hyperextended legs, freaky forward folds with heels in the air and side-show splits are selling you short. There’s more to you than a circus side show– you can jump, you can float, you can stand upside down and on two feet, you can feel union within your own body. I want that for you. So yeah, bendy girl, you ain’t all that.

Actually, you’re more.

PS, I don’t need to hold a “yoga for super-flexy floppy full-splitty fuck-yeah-yoga females” workshop after all. You just have to “bring your ass to class”— Ashtanga class, that is, preferably mysore style. Oh, and stiff dudes–

that applies to you, too.

PPS, If you are a dude looking to commiserate with other yoga men without a bunch of bendy chicks cramping your style, a wonderful brogi I know is doing a “Yoga for Dudes” workshop at Inner Power Yoga in Sterling, VA on November 15.  Sign up here. 

 

*** Featured photo by Jim Campbell, Omlight Photography