Stay Away From Your Edge
A yoga cue that has meaning far beyond the mat
There is a piece of advice often offered by yoga teachers when encouraging students to avoid injury: stay away from your edge. By which they mean, don’t take a stretch or posture to the outer limit of your range of motion. You can experience the intention of a posture — such as opening the shoulders, or making space in the upper spine — without obsessing about the end point or how it should look.
This may be surprising to some, especially if you’re a yoga cynic. After all, isn’t Instagram riddled with skinny white girls doing all manner of gymnastics-like poses, appearing to do things very much on the edge? Well, yes—I can’t argue with you there. Both those same people may need hip replacements soon. And yoga that looks like gymnastics should be regarded with high suspicion, in my opinion.
Anyway, when employed by a yoga teacher, this concept is helpful because everyone’s edge is different. Your forward fold will look different from mine, perhaps because you ran five miles yesterday, and I did not. When you’re nursing a shoulder injury, your edge may be to not attempt a shoulder opener at all. Much like the tide, the edge waxes and wanes. A sustainable yoga practice should be endlessly adaptable to meet it where it is each day.
