Yoga Therapy and the Art of Imperfection

Most of us struggle at least once in life with expressing something that feels impossible whether it’s a complex fear, telling someone that we love them or how they have hurt us, or telling someone that we are sorry. In yoga, heart opening practices like Cobra Pose help on the physical level by relieving tightness, and on the emotional level by releasing blocked emotions like unprocessed grief, fear, or joy. On subtler levels, clearing way for these expressions benefits our overall health and well-being making room for us to know our real nature. Understanding that heart energy opens in many directions and takes sometimes surprising forms can help us make space for expressing what’s difficult without judgment. When we teach yoga, especially in person, it’s easy to sense whether heart opening is what people need and feel how they are moving through their heart experience that day. We can see a heart’s energy opening in many directions, not just forward, not just up, but to the sides, out from the back, in all directions. Where does it all go from there? Here’s one example.

meeting the challenges of life with an open heart

Making It Accessible

Cobra Pose is accessible to almost every body in some form, relatively easy to guide people into and through in a way that allows them to calibrate the appropriate depth for themselves and make good choices about holding and releasing. For some bodies on some days, practicing Cobra pose is simply lying face down (or even up) on the mat, lengthening the spine, drawing the shoulders down and back, and gently imagining the heart expand with each inhale, release with each exhale. An entire sequence can be done around a gentle exploration of Cobra pose. Before yoga studios closed in Washington, D.C., I taught sunrise classes in person at 6:15 a.m. and often incorporated this kind of heart-opening practice. One regular in the class was a Asian-American man in his 40s who we’ll call Phil. Phil was extremely fit and quietly inwardly spiritual. Time passed and I noticed that he seemed to lose some of his muscular bulk. Just something I noticed, yoga teachers notice bodies along with lots of other things. Sometimes Phil would stay after class to chat with others in the gathering area that offered cozy seating and Yogi Tea. One morning, Phil said to me, “You know, today you were talking a lot about heart opening. . . .”

Noticing, Acknowledging, Listening

“Oh no!” Like a cobra, my ego instantly rose in defense, “He’s going to be critical.” It’s not that I am not open to hearing feedback from students, but sometimes I experience fear of what I am going to hear, fear of not being good enough. I noticed my fear, heard my ego, acknowledged it and paused. Then I turned to Phil and listened.

“Early last year I decided that I wanted to open my heart more. I made this known to the universe and asked for help. I just felt like it was something I needed to do.” As it turned out, shortly after Phil made his desire known, he was diagnosed with a heart condition that the doctors said required open-heart surgery. Phil was terrified and he researched like mad to determine the best doctor, the best hospital, and his chances of recovery versus the possible danger of living without surgical intervention. After much soul searching, Phil had the surgery. While in surgery, he had an experience of knowing what he would most miss if he were to leave his body. He thought of all of those he loved; in particular, he came to know how much he loved and would miss his husband.

Working Through It

Phil recovered from his surgery though it left his body weaker, more vulnerable. But his heart-opening experience wasn’t over. While he was still recovering, he and his husband were out walking one evening when a man pointed a gun to his head. They both recovered from the incident. Yet Phil struggled with feelings around safety and trust for some time. “You know,” Phil said back in the yoga studio over Yogi Tea, “When I asked for heart opening I had no idea how that was going to actually happen. Whenever we do heart openers in class, all this stuff is there. I’m still working through it.”

Finding a Way

Now in Washington, D.C., a city in some ways so easy to love with its energy and diversity, parks and fountains and monuments, unique neighborhoods, and all of its history and tensions and change, the National Guard patrols, iron gates surround the Capitol, and barriers turn morning walks into a morning maze, there are new more extreme sources of tension. In the absence of yoga studios where people can practice heart opening together, Phil turns to art to process extreme feelings and help him love what feels difficult. He uses cheap crayons and plain paper to avoid perfection traps. To side-step the stifling self criticism that pops up when he tries to express feelings in writing, he uses pictures instead of words. As a teacher, I learn from Phil that true love may feel dark and dangerous. An open heart may not look or feel like any of the “Hallmark” images we often see. And you never really know what’s going on inside the heart, until you listen.