What is Alignment?

Perfectionism and Yoga

We live in a culture of perfection. Blame it on the internet or school testing or media or puritanism in American history, whatever. The point is our way of life is, in many ways, defined by the pursuit of an ideal version of being. We often long to be purified, idealized, and celebrated for our attainment. Our current health and fitness craze is, in many ways, a new manifestation of this old ideal. Admit it, “wellness” is in many ways an advertising catch-phrase for “perfection.”

This perspective has found its way into the culture of yoga in a big way. A major challenge that teachers and studios face on a daily basis is how to assist students without encouraging a sense of perfectionism. This can be especially tricky when it comes to the idea of “alignment.” When we talk about things like "alignment" we may enable the idea that there is a single standard for every human being, to which all of us should aspire. This idea is incomplete at best and dangerous at worst. Despite the cliche that "we're all on the same path," we all have different histories, different bodies, different wounds and blessings. The way is unique to each student.

alignment without "alignment"

When I began teaching alignment students would often become very excited about fundamental principles, as though they might use them to perfect their practices. They seemed to think they finally had the keys to the kingdom of “perfect.” While this was flattering personally, I knew it wasn’t a fair or honest assessment. I needed to sort out some way to present alignment in a more compassionate, honest way.

It was with this in mind that I developed what I call ‘The Three Fundamental Principles of Alignment.’ These are the concepts I want every student to understand as we discuss the body. I write them on the board before every clinic I teach now. I didn’t invent them, their essence is present in the work of many great teachers, I just figured out a way I like to communicate them to my students.

They go like this: 

THE THREE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF ALIGNMENT

1) EXPERIENCE IS PRIMARY

For years I was taught, and promoted, a posture-first method in my practice. I regularly heard and repeated the phrase, ‘don’t try to make the pose fit the body, make the body fit the pose.’ The idea was that the pose knows better than the student. In this structure, the method has final authority. 

I’ll be honest, I really liked this idea. It appealed to my desire for an external standard of perfection, a standard I desperately tried to meet. Needless to say, my attempts to match these standards of perfection were not productive in the end. 

When a rhetorical tool becomes dogma we lose sight of complexity and subtlety, which are necessary for real understanding. All commands, all principles, and all teachings are at their core just best guesses. They are external rules for an internal experience.

Here is an essential truth: You are the only person who knows what it feels like in your body. Only you can feel its strength or stretch, focus or distraction, joy or despair.  In the end, you are the only one who can determine the value and direction of your practice. A teacher can make suggestions from a place of knowledge but the bottom line is experience. If something in the practice doesn’t feel healthy, that is a very good sign it’s not. When we trust ourselves enough to deeply listen to sensation, the practice comes to life.

2) EVERY BODY IS DIFFERENT

For a long time I was very frustrated by my struggles with lotus pose. I could get into it, but it was always lopsided and tight. Whenever I entered it, I would have to come out after thirty seconds or so because of strain in my knees. I told myself my pain was a necessary part of opening the body. I committed myself to more hip opening, more mobility, more symmetry. I wanted to be like those yogis who could sit in lotus for hours. I even let myself believe that if I could just get lotus to work for me, I would finally have a good meditation practice.

But bodies are not the same. We are not machines. We are not mass produced on a factory line. Some people aren’t meant to sit in lotus for a long time, simply because of the shape of their pelvic bones. Some people have a harder time with headstand because their arm bones are shorter. Some people have to work harder in chair or awkward pose because of the length of their femurs. The architecture of each body is unique, so the challenges of the practice will be unique for each and every student. This is far from bad news, it’s actually wonderful. It means we can truly embrace the personal nature of the practice and create our own way, based on our own experience. Of course we want to study with knowledgeable teachers and practice proven methods, however, we must be certain to respect and celebrate the individual capacity of each body.

3) STRUGGLE IS NOT A METHOD

So many times I have looked out into a room of students and seen grimaces, gripped breath, and clenched teeth. While I deeply respect the commitment of these students - they are certainly applying themselves - I can’t help but wonder how much they’re getting in their own way. 

Struggle is what happens when we meet a limit and only apply more strain and effort. “Try harder” is not, itself, a valuable command. If you’re a runner, “try harder” isn’t going to help you run through a brick wall in your path. You’ll just run into the wall over and over, and you’ll probably get hurt. It is the same with postures; you need an effective plan, plus effort, to have a method. Struggle itself is no method at all, it is effort without a good plan.

With these three principles in mind, it is possible to discuss alignment with a sense of curiosity and compassion. We can discover what works and what doesn't work, from our unique position in our own body. We can play in the realm of experience and find our own sense of illumination in the practice. 

THE ALIGNMENT CANOE

Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in a canoe, preparing to cross a lake. You start to paddle, but the boat just doesn’t move. You struggle and fight and splash and yell and eventually exhaust yourself. You do this day after day, maybe for years. Maybe you get frustrated because you never go anywhere, so you start to tell yourself your exhaustion is the measure of success. If you’re completely spent, you think, you did it right. Since you couldn’t find value in moving across the lake, you found value in how hard you fought in the attempt.

Now imagine that one day you look down and realize that this whole time you’ve been facing sideways in the canoe. You were actively working against the design of your vehicle. What if you just turned yourself, faced forward, and tried again? This is what it’s like when you find your alignment. You drop the illusion that exhaustion was the point. Your vessel begins to move along, as intended. It’s still hard work of course, but things operate more smoothly. You glide. And in that place, in harmony with action and environment and design, you discover why you got in the canoe in the first place.

This is, to me, the real practice. When you drop struggle, investigate the uniqueness of your own body, and listen closely to your experience, you start to come into alignment with your individual perfection. Practicing postures and principles can illuminate the way, but in the end only you can glide across the water.

~Kyle