When I started my yoga prac­tice in early 2004, I attacked it as an all-​​out assault. I bought yoga books (actu­ally, read­ing some), sub­scribed to Yoga Jour­nal, browsed the Inter­net for insight and resources, hunted down a con­ve­nient stu­dio to start tak­ing classes. I started up a blog. It’s a method that I have used to get up to speed in a craft, an exper­tise or a career.

I was embar­rassed at how far out of shape I was and how it inter­fered with my prac­tice. Impa­tient, I went to the gym to do aer­o­bic exer­cises and lift weights to speed up the process of regain­ing sta­mina and strength. With a boot camp men­tal­ity, I thought it was only a mat­ter of time before the extra sit-​​ups would do the trick. While weightlift­ing one night, I tweaked a mus­cle in my lower back. It didn’t seem too bad at the time. I backed off my weightlift­ing for a week. Then, I started up again and hurt my lower back even worse. I had to give up asana prac­tice all together for a cou­ple of months as I tried to heal my back pain.

I con­sulted with an acupunc­tur­ist who helped me a lot over the next six months. He told me that in Chi­nese med­i­cine, excess energy, or chi, tends to built up in the major joints (hips, shoul­ders) and the ther­a­peu­tic nee­dle work is meant to unblock these energy points. In my case, I must have the equiv­a­lent of a car bomb because my hips, shoul­ders and ankles are major obsta­cles in my practice.

Because I was no longer going to class, I had to focus on my home prac­tice. For­tu­nately, I did not stop med­i­tat­ing and breath work so I still had a daily prac­tice. I even­tu­ally focused on poses that helped strengthen my back, hold­ing each one for longer peri­ods, 30 sec­onds plus. It’s sim­i­lar to the approach that Paul Gril­ley rec­om­mends, yin yoga.

I had to slow down to my asana prac­tice to a pace that my 55-​​year-​​old body could accept because the process was just as much about tear­ing down rigid crusts as build­ing strength. It made me lis­ten more closely to where the resis­tance was in my body. And it was not one big cor­rec­tion of the imbal­ances in my body, but a drawn-​​out series of micro-​​corrections that hap­pens only when the body is ready for each step. Even after I returned to the yoga stu­dio, I con­tin­ued in a restora­tive, heal­ing approach in my home practice.

Even now, I may shift my stance in War­rior to more evenly bal­ance my weight on both legs, and the next day my thighs ache as if I had jogged for 30 minutes.