03/07/2025
No, my back is not very bendy. You can probably spot what I mean.
But hey! This is just simple daily practice.
The other day I shared this video with a few students, together with some notes on dropback.
Later in the week I caught myself falling prey to what in Buddhism is called Eight Mundane Concerns. I thought of making a better version and posting it on Instagram, a fancier one. You know what I mean…
Yep! It is always so easy to fall into the push and pull of the mental afflictions. Attachment to praise and the aversion to blame. I think that is one of the risks of misusing social media.
But that’s okay. No judgement. Just noticing it, accepting it and coming back to the main path. Where you know the steps are leading in the right direction.
It sounds like a kind of “coming out” post 🤓 No fancy moves, no elaborate setting or drone shot.
Just practice. The way I was taught. The way is supposed to be in my understanding. Early in the morning in the silence of a room filled with breath, sweat and dedication. An expression of self-love and love toward others.
Coming back to the drop back.
Don’t get tricked, this is much easier for the body, than backbending like kapotasana. If you think of it from the anatomical point of view, the chain of joints of the body that are interested have the average range of motion that would allow anyone to make an “O” shape catching the heels.
All right, all right. Reality check says it often doesn’t happen so easily. But if the starting point is a body in which the joints have been used improperly for decades…maybe from sitting all day in a chair, compressing the vertebrae of the lower back, squeezing the feet into shoes that deform their shape, not proper eating, not proper sleeping, not proper thinking…
Then maybe it’s not about “learning” how to do a dropback as much as “unlearning” all the superstructures we’ve built, more or less consciously, and letting it happen. The breath is steady and calm, then the mind will relax, and only then the body will follow the movement, letting go of the resistance.
In the end yoga is about rediscovering our true nature. Isn’t it?
Om shanti, shanti shanti 🙏