My 14 years of Kundalini Yoga had helped heal emotional wounds, make me more aware, and strengthen my nervous system, but my physical body needed more. It was because a Kundalini Yoga healer said I needed to be more “physically integrated” that, in 1999, I started to do more vigorous forms of yoga. Including chaturanga.
Enter Ashtanga Yoga and Dharma Mittra Yoga (dharmanyoga) into my practice. My physical body gradually became stronger in all parts, particularly my upper body, and my hips and shoulders opened up more and more. I was able to do a split and finally attained arm balances like headstand, handstand and forearm stand. I thought my practice was evolving to a place I could maintain.
Fifteen years later in a yoga teacher training I was leading, one of the students, a lovely French woman, counted fifty — 50 — chaturangas in Series One of Ashtanga Yoga. Yes! It had taken me ten years to become proficient in Series One in the Mysore Ashtanga Yoga approach to yoga practice, but I was there!
I had started these practices at age forty-four. Despite pain in my shoulder from a long-ago bike accident, I was still able to do the deep drop into a yoga pushup and transition into the upward facing dog from there, not an easy physical feat. As the Ashtanga teacher Patabhis Jois said, “Practice, practice, practice.” And I did.
I built up to what are called jump backs and jump throughs. No one had ever mentioned that I should not crash my body into poses, so I got to the point I could crash into chaturanga from headstand two, the tripod headstand. At the time it all felt pretty good.
In 2003, while I continued to work as a full-time yoga instructor, I started studying Iyengar Yoga every week with a teacher I revere in New York City. Finding that teacher, Genny Kapuler, was a gift that made me realize how important it is to support our joints with our muscle engagement.
In Spring 2020, I led our yoga teacher training at Sewall House. I shared Dharma Wheel practice with the students, including rolling off the wheel in a new way. Then we did Ashtanga — including many chaturangas — and my shoulder got so aggravated that I could not put my hands together in prayer pose.
Over the winter I rehabilitated my shoulder with Feldenkrais, then therapeutic yoga with my now-wise Ashtanga teacher. I realized that strong Yang (i.e. Vinyasa) Yoga practices are not always sustainable, and so I continued studies with my Iyengar teacher and Dharma Mittra.
My shoulder is often painful, especially when I’m trying to sleep, but I am still, cautiously, able to do some — not all — of the things I could before. I truly wonder whether all the years of chaturangas, part of a practice developed for healthy teenage boys, is what contributed to my shoulder finally breaking down.
I am grateful for what I can still do and I use my experience to advise guests at Sewall House Yoga retreat. I recommend that they explore both Yin and Yang forms of yoga, and help them understand that one style of yoga does not fit everyone!
Author: Donna Amrita Davidge, is the owner of Sewall House Yoga retreat and integrated Kundalini, Iyengar, Ashtanga, Nidra, Restorative and Hatha Yoga into her training there.
