Am I Too Heavy, Old, or Inflexible to Do Arm Balances?
We need to talk about what happens in your head after you faceplant. You know the mental conversation I'm talking about.
You spend twenty minutes working on Side Crow. You've shifted your hips about seventeen different ways, you're staring at some completely arbitrary spot on the floor like you could light it on fire with your third eye, and you're gripping the mat so hard you might rub off your fingerprints.
And then, finally, your feet come up! "OMG I'm DOING IT!"
Then straight down you go - nosediving into your new IKEA rug. "WHY THE F*CK CAN'T I DO THIS?"
And while you're lying there questioning your life choices, your brain helpfully starts working through the evidence as to why your nostrils are currently breathing in cat hair.
"Well... your arms are probably too short." Fair enough, my upper arms are a little T-rex-ish...
"And your hips are pretty tight. Remember....every time you get up from the floor, you make the noise of a person twice your age. Speaking of which, you're not exactly twenty-five anymore." Hmm yep, maybe that's it. Short arms, tight hips, and a few too many birthdays. I guess my body just isn't built for Side Crow.
The whole thing feels very logical. You're not deciding you can't do the pose because you don't want to work for it. You're not making excuses, nope. You've simply looked at your body, looked at the pose, looked at the spectacular carpet-based evidence in front of you, and reached a sensible conclusion:
"This just isn't a pose my body can do."
I want to push back on that.
"But I'm old. Or stiff. Or carrying some extra weight..."
And some of those things might be true. You might be 73. You might not be able to touch your toes. Your belly might feel in the way when you put your hands on the floor. (Psst... if the version of this you're stuck on is "I'm just not strong enough," I pulled that one apart in this post.)
But none of those things automatically mean you can't do an arm balance.
They might change how you get into the pose. They don't get to decide whether you can.
I've seen people in their 60s and 70s learn things they were absolutely convinced were off the table for them. I've seen bigger-bodied students get their feet off the floor when they'd spent years assuming their weight was the reason they couldn't. I've seen very inflexible people nail every arm balance in The Big Book of Arm Balances.
The problem starts when "I'm too stiff, I'm too old, or I'm too heavy" becomes the end of the conversation. Because look where that leaves you:
If your problem is that your arms are too short, what exactly are you supposed to do with that information? Measure them again?
If your problem is that you're too old, are you going to wait until your next birthday and see if things magically get worse?
If your problem is that you're too stiff, will you spend the next six months stretching your hamstrings and still have absolutely no idea whether that was ever the thing stopping you in the first place?
None of it gets you anywhere. You're just left with an incorrect verdict about your body and no clue what to do next.
Maybe your faceplant isn't telling you what you think it is
The next time you faceplant, I don't want you lying there thinking, "Yep. There it is. More evidence that my cursed T-rex arms are not made for Crow pose"
I want you to get curious.
What actually happened? Did your feet never get light? Did you get them up but immediately tip over? Did one side feel completely different from the other? Did you panic and bail before you really gave yourself a chance?
That's useful information. I'd much rather have a student come to me and say, "I can get my feet up, but I keep falling to the side" than "I can't do Side Crow because I'm too heavy."
The first one gives us something to work with. The second one just gives us a really convincing excuse to not try ever again.
Your body is going to have limitations. Of course it is. Mine does too (Hello, tight shoulders!). But a limitation isn't the same as "I can't do an arm balance."
More often than not, it just means the way you've been getting into the pose doesn't suit your body. That part, you can change.
And that's what we do every day inside Yogi Flight School. We help you figure out what your particular body needs to do the pose, instead of handing you a picture and telling you to somehow make yourself look like it.
So go ahead. Faceplant. Just don't let your brain turn one spectacular meeting with the IKEA rug into a life sentence. Ask what happened. Then use the answer.
