In life, even the most physically inflexible bend. In every direction – backward, forward and sideways- for relationships, health, for kids, for love, for career and much more than we anticipate. It’s just another way to keep going, to find the best we can in every situation we are put in. Life pushes us here and there, so we learn to bend and not break. There is also a stage called – Too much bending. The one we get into when we stop living for ourselves and start living for others – again to SAVE – mostly relationships, to protect love, sometimes in jealousy, sometimes in anger. This is how bending breaks us. That’s why we have to set boundaries – just so we don’t break.
Bending takes effort. Mentally more than physically. And yet we do it. We don’t run away when things get tough, do we? Nopes, in our very own individualistic, unique ways – we bend!
Bends/ Bending in Yoga
While there are so many reasons why we consciously bend in Yoga – strong back, a healthy spine, well worked on back muscles, building agility in the back, but there is one big reason why bending is majorly practices and even advised to practice and is a big part of Yoga.
The most important quality of a backbend is not how much you can bend. It is how much can you lift the chest away from the navel. Which also means how much heart space can you make. Which further means how can you open up your heart chakras. Which in turn means how can you while working on your own well being, create well meaning connections with others, bring in compassion, love and beauty.
A liitle more about Heart Chakras -In Sanskrit, this chakra is called anahata. “In fact, it is the spiritual place where past experiences and grievances can no longer harm us.” Those with an open, well balanced heart chakra are full of love, forgiveness and compassion. But if this chakra is blocked, anger, grief, hatred and jealousy will manifest.
You will often hear people tell you how emotional they get while doing a backbend, a camel pose, a bow pose. Why? because they say that heart chakra is where the process of healing begins. A trauma in life, in childhood, in relationships – you can actually start healing all that trauma by opening your heart chakras. You would now understand why so many strained people find their peace in Yoga.
The famous quote – We bend so we don’t break – is all about stretching our limits, to un-cover the strength that lives in us, untapped. Some walls are too high, BENDING is a skill to scale them!
1 comment
Well written Tanya. It is true that we bend so much to carry out so many other chores for others. I am working from home now and living abroad means I get more responsibility to take care of my kid, wife and work. Sometimes I do feel drained and I miss out on my running or workouts. But at the end of the day when we sit down and think how the day flew by you get that feeling “wow-I-went-through-all-that”