Our Converging Histories In Yoga Practice

In yoga, as practitioners and teachers, the two most common questions we work with are variations of: why do I struggle with this pose, and why does this hurt. We often try to solve these problems with commonly held ideas about alignment. Many of our ideas about alignment are well-intentioned, but they are missing one crucial piece. That is our unique bodies and experiences, and their intersections with our anatomy. It’s what I refer to as our converging histories.

We all show up to yoga with the body and the history that we have. There’s no way around that. We don’t get to trade ourselves in for a different model that didn’t experience that car accident, or crash our mountain bike, or get kicked in the shin during soccer practice.

With all the visual imagery we have access to these days, it can be easy to compare ourselves and/or our students to a picture and think our pose isn’t right if it doesn’t look like what we’ve seen. It would be an easy fix if all we needed to do was line things up in the right way for perfectly safe, perfectly effective yoga practice. But unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The intersection of general human anatomy with our specific converging histories and yoga is complex. But if we enjoy a good puzzle, it’s also what keeps things interesting.

What are our converging histories?

Our converging histories are the sum total of our genetics and life experiences that shape who we are in this moment. Some of those are things we were born with, others are the result of things that happened to us, and others are things we chose. Let’s look closer at this concept.

What we’re born with

We’re all born as bipedal humans. This, of course, sets the general shape that we have to work with. Our pelvis has a certain orientation and relationship to our legs below and our torso above, which is different from our four-legged friends. It allows us to walk, and in fact, makes walking our most fundamental movement as humans.

Each of us is also born with a certain set of genetic realities and predispositions. Our genetics play a strong role in our bone shape, bone length, joint angles, and our proportions, such as the length of our femur relative to our torso. Our genetics also influence things like our elastin to collagen fiber ratio, which in turn influences our possible range of mobility and stability (our ease or difficulty with gaining flexibility or strength).

Our life history

At any particular moment in time, our converging history includes our age and our life history up to this moment. Examples of this part of our converging history are our walking pattern, which we learned from our parents or immediate caregivers as a baby. It also includes injuries or accidents we experienced. We could even consider our personality, and mental and emotional outlook, to be part of our life history.

Things we chose

Our converging histories are, of course, strongly influenced by what we choose to do with our body. The more time we spend doing something specific with our body, the more strongly that pattern gets laid down. Our sports and other physical activities, like dance or going to the gym, create certain patterns. Other activities, like what we do for work, carrying our kids around when they’re young, and changes to our physiology like pregnancy, are all part of our converging history.

Why are we interested in converging histories?

Our converging histories are what collectively result in who and what we are in a particular moment. It’s that total experience we carry into yoga. That’s the baseline we begin with when we look at how we, or a student, move in a yoga posture. If we see or experience something we think should change in our yoga practice or a student’s practice, our converging history is the baseline that we start that change from. Knowing where we’re starting from is important for planning where we would like to travel towards and how best to get there.

As teachers, we don’t fix people. We try to create the conditions and opportunities for new pathways to emerge for the student and their body. That begins with recognizing where someone is and then working with their neuroplasticity to collaboratively shape their journey in a direction. When you observe a student shifting their pattern, whether it’s postural, movement, a transition between poses, or even potentially breath-related, you are witnessing neuroplasticity.

Tools for supporting change

We have many tools to support students in shaping their practice through neuroplastic change. Hands-on assists and mirroring enhance the sensory input into the student’s nervous system and affect how their mind-body map is created. This further empowers students to notice and track their own changes. Encouraging repetition with awareness, not just mindless drilling, can support this process as well. And, acknowledging that change takes time and feels strange at first can help us normalize this experience for our students.

The role of neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the fundamental way in which we learn, potentially how we heal, and even how we grow, physically and in some ways psychologically. By understanding and working with this natural capacity, yoga becomes not just a tool for strength and flexibility, but also for increasing body awareness. Every breath, every movement, every choice to slow down and pay attention is a reaffirmation towards repatterning our movements and our way of experiencing our body. But the journey of change all starts with recognizing where someone is beginning from, and that is the collective result of our converging histories.