Learning the modifications that work for your body is probably the single most important part of this practice. Think about it. While our bodies have mostly the same structure, we have a multitude of differences that affect our practice. We could have specific disorders that prevent us from backbends, injuries that keep us from arm balancing, or body types that make certain poses inaccessible. Whatever the reason may be, learning to modify poses for you should be a top priority in your practice.
When to Modify
This won't be a comprehensive list, but rather some of the top reasons you'll find in the practice. Here's my top four reasons to modify poses.
Pain
This is probably the most important reason to modify a pose. Most poses are uncomfortable and this isn't a fluke. The practice puts you in shapes that are meant to evoke feelings and sensations that replicate your habitual patterns. If a pose is uncomfortable, you can learn to slow down and breathe through it by feeling and noticing body sensations and thoughts attributed to the discomfort. However, when you feel pain, this is your body sending you a message to change something. For example, if you feel pain (sharp or dull) behind the knees or low back in a standing forward fold, this may indicate that your hamstrings are too tight for the leg position. If you continue to disregard the pain and force your legs to straighten each time, you can cause more damage, such as straining or tearing muscles, leading to forced respite for healing. Instead of doing a pose the way you think it should be practiced, despite the pain you're feeling, modify the pose. This practice will benefit your body in that moment as well as the longevity of all your movement practices.
New or Old Injury
When you're injured, the healing process can take a few days, weeks, months, years, or even a lifetime. When you come back to yoga after an injury (or after it's been retriggered), doing the same movements prior to the injury may now be inaccessible. Yes, that sucks…but it's yoga. Sometimes you'll have to learn to roll with your body's limitations by honoring its abilities and inabilities. After my teacher training, I was left with a shoulder strain from a repetitive stress injury of placing too much weight towards my shoulders to compensate for a lack of strength and poor alignment. Making the conscious effort to practice chaturanga with my knees down for an entire month let me build the strength I needed to refine the pose. When I tested the full pose a month later, the pain was completely gone and hasn't returned more than six years later. Moral of this story? Be in your body when you're practicing, learn which movements don't serve it, and make conscious decisions to modify those poses for a period of time, testing it every once in a while to see your progress.
Inability to Hold
Sometimes you'll encounter poses beyond your ability. Whether it's due to flexibility, strength, a combination of the two, or some other reason, we may find ourselves exploding out of a pose. Kind of like when we don't leave enough room in that mason jar for the chicken stock to expand as it freezes so it breaks the jar and we're forced to start the long process all over again (true story). But the difference between exploding in your yoga pose and the chicken stock analogy is that instead of starting over from the beginning, you can try this one pose again and modify it to work with your body. Finding your body's limits sometimes means trying something and failing at it (and in some cases falling or exploding). The good news is that you can use this reaction to refine your movement and learn what works and doesn't work for you. Remember that you can still learn a lot about the pose even if you're not doing the hardest variation because any amount of the pose is still the pose. Over time you'll build flexibility, strength, and the understanding you need that will make the pose click in a way it hasn't before.
New or Advanced Practitioners
Modifications aren't just for beginners or those with injuries. As beginners, modifications are great for building strength, flexibility, and fully understanding a pose so you can do harder poses later on. It also creates good habits that'll stick with you for a lifetime. However, changing patterns once it feels normal is a habit harder to break down the road when you may be forced to change it (like my chaturanga story). This is why it is also important for advanced practitioners to work on more rudimentary pose variations. Take a musician for example. Ben, my partner, has played piano for most of his life. I may be biased, but he's pretty amazing. Every time he practices, he incorporates first principles. These are basic skills you need to be good at anything because if you don't understand first principles, you'll inevitably hit a wall until you learn the needed skill. Therefore, every time Ben practices, he practices chords and circle of fifths because it will help him understand how to play certain pieces of music and make connections he couldn't before. When practicing yoga, you can choose an "easier" (subjectively-speaking) pose. You can choose side angle pose, for example, without a bind and explore the more basic version of bottom forearm to thigh and upper arm over ear. You'll, perhaps, break habitual patterns that actually don't work for your body and begin to develop new edges because your body isn't repeatedly pushed to the same edge each time.
My Point of View
Modifications are sometimes negatively viewed in the modern-day practice. But from the point of view of the teacher, I like when people modify as long as it isn’t disrupting the class. If someone started working on their handstands while I’m cueing Savasana, that’d be a little too much. However, if I'm to be completely honest here, your modifications help my teaching. They educate me with ways I can offer poses in the future for various disorders or injuries, skill levels, body types, and so much more. So as much as you may be learning from me, I am definitely learning from you.
Additionally, when you choose a modification, I never look down on you for choosing them, regardless of whether it is an easier or harder option (again, as long as it isn’t distracting). Honestly, I admire you for modifying because you’re making a conscious choice to honor your body at that moment. Ultimately, I enjoy seeing you modify to suit your body because it tells me you are doing this practice for you and that is what really matters.
Have a pose you want to know how to modify? Feel free to leave a comment below or sign up for a free 15-minute Zoom consultation here.
