February 2023 | Unfurl — Oceana Mariani

NOTE: This was originally published as part of my newsletter in January 2023. Subscribe to my newsletter to receive the next Om Letter direct to your inbox once a month.

Recently I’ve been having a lot of conversations about injuries. In all of these discussions the other person was, for the first time in their life, experiencing an injury that was not shifting quickly enough for their liking. I can almost hear the more experienced movers amongst you having a little chuckle and reminiscing back to the ‘first one,’ because for all of us there is a first time that we truly confront the limitations of our physical body.

Often this moment gives us a glimpse into our own shadow side - we become frustrated, annoyed or even angry at this body that just won’t heal itself the way it used to when we were 18. Of course that’s just another character flaw to absolutely run away from and avoid confronting at all costs…

Jokes aside, I’m fairly certain that those of us with the good fortune of hindsight and possibly some years or decades of movement practice behind us, would agree that those injuries ended up becoming our greatest teachers. We don’t always make firm friends with them, but we learn to co-exist and navigate around them. Sometimes we leave them behind, sometimes they become our lifelong companions.

So then, if getting injured is inevitable, the bigger question becomes how do we navigate and relate to the challenge an injury presents us with?

When I first started teaching there was a substantial age gap between the people I taught: university students and those who had been around the block once or twice. Although I enjoyed throwing everything but the kitchen sink at those young guns, my ‘mature’ students brought a level of appreciation to their practice that is impossible to teach. When we lose some of the freedom afforded to us by pain free movement it gives us a clearer picture of how this might impact the quality of our life long-term. A ‘good’ yoga student embraces the physical part of their practice as a tool to maintain and improve their unique ability to move as they grow older. Here let me emphasise the idea of growing as we age - continuously learning and not losing our ability to begin again, giving ourselves permission to be totally rubbish while trying something new.

A friend of mine recently asked me if I still saw myself teaching yoga in 20 years time and I do, but it’ll probably look quite different to how I teach now… Now I still love guiding a dynamic and physically challenging Vinyasa class, but one day I probably won’t. Both in my own practice and my teaching I’ve become more passionate about incorporating active rest, meditation and relaxation - all the stuff you could have chased me out of a yoga studio with in my early twenties. Our physical and personal interests, as well as our needs and desires naturally shift as we get older. The beauty of yoga is that there are eight limbs to this discipline and the physical asana practice only represents one of those. There is still so much to explore beyond that point. So, as we age out of one thing, we age into another and yoga can support this continuous development.

If you’re still navigating through that first big injury or, you still have that to look forward to, then remind yourself to take that longer view of movement as a constant companion through life. This is the time to build up a database of knowledge on how you can support your body better - something you’ll appreciate being able to fall back on when needed.

For those of you looking to speed up your recovery process and prevent future injuries (here’s looking at you marathon runners), you may want to give those practices of rest a little more of your precious time and attention. So often that’s not what very active people living in busy cities want to hear, but there’s been a plethora of research that all points to the real benefits of what getting comfortable with quietly doing nothing can do for us in the short and long-term. How we incorporate active rest into our daily or weekly routines can look different for each of us, but a Restorative or Yin yoga class might be a good place to start exploring the many possibilities of stillness.

With love,

OM x

Monthly Mantra

“In the stillness of the mind I see myself as I am - unbound”

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

February 2023 | Unfurl

Monthly Mantra

“In the stillness of the mind I see myself as I am - unbound”

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