core work

I’m standing with my back to the wall, eyes closed. The Avett Brothers are keeping me company this morning, the first morning in months that I’ve relegated entirely to myself. Bending my creaking knees, I slide down till I’m sitting on an imaginary chair. My brick red yoga mat stretches out before me, its rubbery edges curling up from the floor. I feel the right side of my upper back pressing into the wall, the left, concave side, has a gap which I struggle to correct with endless tiny shifts. My legs are burning and I’m frustrated, in shock that my 15+ years of yoga practice have come to this, starting over.

In the strange way that things sometimes unfold, I decided to start going to a weekly local Pilates group a few weeks ago. There are 3 or 4 women in the group, and to be honest, I have never taken an interest in Pilates before. The one class I tried years ago felt like everything I hate about exercise: boring, repetitive, and relentlessly painful. I didn't WANT to focus on my core, my weakest muscle group. Though I could do fabulous and impressive yoga poses till the cows came home, I compensated for a weak core by being ridiculously gifted with absurd flexibly. I didn’t want to think about what real strength is and where it comes from. I wanted to keep showing off to myself, doing what came naturally and easily. 

I was lonely with this latest move across the world. In this coastal Mediterranean town, Pilates seemed to be everywhere. I joined a group that had some women I thought I might become friends with, because a simple outing for coffee seemed too hard to arrange. The group was happening weekly, so it seemed like a natural way to see people regularly. Making myself vulnerable socially by reaching out just didn't feel like something I wanted to have to do, all the time. I can do it sometimes, but I didn’t want to rely on myself to keep it up - my moods fluctuate too much here, my energy levels tank randomly with a baby that won’t sleep, and I just didn’t have it in me to keep doing the work of building new friendships. So, to Pilates class I went. Immediately the teacher noticed my scoliosis. I literally hadn’t thought about my scoliosis for 20 years, maybe more. I was diagnosed at twelve, told I was too old for a brace. My parents chose not to do the aggressive four hour surgery that would place a metal rod into my spine. So, we ignored it. I figured I would just live my life, do yoga to strengthen my back and hope for the best. By the time I would be old enough to develop a noticeable hump, I figured, with the arrogance of youth, I’d be too old to care what I looked like. 

On the eve of my 39th birthday, I realize what a crock of shit that idea was. Leaving aside the very real pain involved in structurally deformed musculature, of COURSE I would care, at whatever age I developed a more noticeable hump. With every new wrinkle I develop, I marvel at how inside I continue to hold onto my image of myself at 20, with unshakeable faith. THAT is what I look like to myself, probably forever. The need to feel good in my body, beautiful (even if only) in my mind, was basic, elemental, part of my core. A pronounced hump, scoliosis that can be seen just by glancing at the way one side of my ribs protrudes slightly more than the other, the way one shoulder rises just a tad higher than the other, suddenly bothered me profoundly and deeply. I felt like there was something flawed about me, exposed and raw, for all to see, and I did not like it. 

Googling led me to the next problem. Numerous websites, with all sorts of expert testimony, declared that yoga poses can worsen existing scoliosis. Photographs of my beloved Half Moon, Cobra, Scorpion poses flashed across the screen, big X’s stamped over them, words like “exacerbate” and “contraindicated” casually displayed. I did not want to believe it - I felt betrayed. My yoga practice, my years of studying and teaching, collapsed around me. I taught yoga, for godssakes. How could I have missed something so basic, so essential, so core?

I felt like I was breaking up with a beloved friend. No more yoga till I figure this thing out. I read the articles, I downloaded books onto my kindle. It turns out that I can still do yoga, I will just have to bring a very specific intentionality to every single pose that I do, and some poses I simply will not be able to do. I will have to rebuild my practice, relearn poses that seemed so basic and obvious just days ago. I realize, in the scheme of world problems, this is so tiny. Minuscule, really. I just found it interesting how humbling this week has been. How we can go through life thinking we’ve got this, and be missing the entire center of whatever “this” we might be talking about.