Ryan McGraw
At the age of 19, I took my first yoga class. My mom had been asking me to take a yoga class for months. She thought it would be very beneficial for my strength, flexibility, and mental well-being. Having cerebral palsy (CP), doing exercise to keep my strength and flexibility is very important. However, I was convinced that yoga was not for me. After all, I was a male high school senior, and in my mind yoga was a flowery workout that was reserved for women. It was definitely not cool for a teenage guy to do yoga!
The other reason for my apprehension was that I do have CP. Questions ran through my mind: Would I be able to successfully do a yoga class? How would I look in a yoga class? Would I be on display because of my CP? Although these questions were in my head and did play a part in my apprehension, the fact that my masculinity might be questioned by my friends and others was my number one concern.
I finally relented and decided to try a class at our health club to please my mom. I don’t remember the poses done in the class, but what I do remember is having a unique, peaceful feeling after savasana—that feeling you get after a good yoga practice. This surprised me because all my life I had been an active person. At this time I was swimming six times a week preparing for a competition, but I’d never felt that profoundly peaceful, connected feeling after a workout. I just brushed it off as a “weird feeling,” though, and when my mom asked me how I enjoyed class, I simply said it was okay.
I continued to take yoga classes throughout that summer. Most of the classes were with my teacher and friend to this day, Chris. Chris and I connected almost immediately. He made me feel okay about being a man who practiced yoga! Not only this, but he was, and still is, an awesome and inspirational teacher who has a great understanding of yoga.
As time passed, those feelings of apprehension coming from being a male person with CP practicing yoga began to dissipate. They certainly did not completely disappear. I still notice when I am the only male in a yoga class or the class is doing a pose that I cannot perform. Even though I still notice these things, I have become perfectly fine with the fact that I may be in a class with all women or that I may have a different expression of a certain pose than everyone else in the class.
Guys and Yoga?
I must admit, for those first couple of years doing yoga, I was hesitant to let my male friends know I practiced (and liked) yoga. When I did let a few friends know, the news was met with a laugh and a condescending comment about my masculinity. Though these comments were made jokingly, they made me self-conscious. The stereotypical image of a young adult male is one of lifting weights in the gym, not doing yoga to soft music in a dimly lit room. It’s just not “cool.” And certainly not “masculine.”
I have invited a few of those same friends to take yoga with me over the years. They have been humbled by the physicality of the workout. They have commented, “My muscles are so tight,” “That was a tough workout,” and “I need to do this more.” Their perception of yoga changed after they took a class. I think with yoga’s growing popularity, and with the advent of new styles of fitness-based yoga over the past ten years, it has become more culturally acceptable for men to do yoga. However, I don’t know if the perception of yoga among males in high school and young adulthood has changed. There is a lot of peer pressure at that age and a lot of emphasis on fitting in. I became more comfortable with the fact that I was a male doing yoga as I matured. As I matured, the people around me matured too, and yoga just became something that I did.
Over the next two years, I took classes here and there primarily for my physical benefit. During this time I understood how yoga could benefit me physically. My goal was to do the full expression of every pose. For example, I wanted to touch the floor in trikonasana (Triangle pose) or keep up with the class when they were doing Sun Salutations quickly. I wanted to do poses and go for poses like everyone else in the class, not understanding the potential risk of injury that put me at. For example, one may be able to touch the ground in trikonasana, but if they are dumping into their low back, totally out of alignment, unsteady and not breathing properly, they are putting themselves at a great risk of injury. Thus, at this point in my yoga journey I did not understand the principles of adaptation and the positive benefits of modification as they related to my body.
Custom Yoga
During my sophomore year of college, I became increasingly interested in yoga for its therapeutic benefits. One night I decided to take a class at a yoga studio that had just opened up. It was a level 2/3 class, but I figured I could handle it. I had met the teacher of the class, Karina Mirsky, briefly in the past, so I thought it would be no problem. It was a problem, though!
Karina thought it would be in my best interest if I came back for a level 1 or level ½ class. However, I managed to convince her that I would be okay. During the class it became clear that the question was not whether I could do the poses (I did the poses in the way I was used to doing them), but whether I could do the poses in a safe manner. Karina did what she could to keep me safe in the class by adjusting me. She saw that I risked injury in various poses because my body was out of alignment. I needed to find a way to adapt or modify some of the yoga poses.
After class we talked and decided that I should do a private session. I did not really know what to expect in a private session with her, but I knew she had worked with individuals with disabilities before with both yoga and massage.
When we began the session, Karina announced that we would begin our practice in a chair. I thought this was interesting, as I had never practiced yoga seated in a chair before, but I was more than willing to give it a try. We did a few poses in the chair: arm raises, a twist, a seated forward fold, and probably a few more I don’t remember.
What was stressed throughout that session was the importance of adapting poses for my own individual needs. I did not need to go for the full expression of every pose because doing so could be harmful. I needed to discover the expression of the pose that suited my body. When I adapted poses to the needs of my body, my body was in better alignment. As a result, I am still getting the benefits of the pose even though the form of the pose may be different from the other bodies in class.
Since I have spastic cerebral palsy and my entire body is affected, there are a variety of adaptations/modifications I do. Even though I do not adapt every yoga pose, I probably could! The poses that I need to adapt/modify the most are standing poses, because I am often off balance in these poses. When I am off balance, I activate the wrong muscles to get into poses, thus putting unnecessary stress on my body and not finding ease in the pose. An example of an adaptation I do is Triangle pose with my back against the wall, bringing my hand to the back of a chair. Of course, standing poses are not the only ones I adapt. Since my lower back rounds when I do seated poses, I always sit on a blanket (which is a very common adaptation that is encouraged in many yoga classes). The complexity of the adaptation I choose often depends on the pace of class I am in, but I always try to keep my body safe in poses.
Though I did not buy in totally to this philosophy after a single yoga session, something had clicked. I began to work with Karina more and apply these principles of adaptation to regular yoga classes that I took, becoming more concerned with setting up poses properly than attempting to keep up with the class. I became more enthusiastic about yoga and wanted to gain as much knowledge I could about this discipline by taking workshops and interning at my friend Chris’s yoga studio the summers of my sophomore and junior year of college.
More Layers
As my physical practice of the asanas began to become my own, I found that the mental and spiritual aspects of my practice started to fall into place. I attribute this to the fact that by respecting the needs of my body instead of struggling in poses, I was able to focus on other things within the pose. I could become aware of my breath, which is the foundation of yoga poses. With the breath I was able to go deeper into my practice, through the breath and respecting the needs of my body.
Through combining breath and movement, I was better able to feel a calmness when I practiced. But to really be able to focus on the breath when I practice, I need to respect the needs of my body. For example, if I am doing a standing forward fold, I can touch the ground. However, I would most likely not have a consistent breath and would not be doing the pose in alignment. If I brought my hands to a chair or blocks, I would much more likely be connected with my breath and have a more consistent breath. Alignment of the body enhances the quality of breath, which in turn enhances the quality of mind. The connection of all three is vital to yoga.
In 2008, I moved to Chicago to begin graduate school and found a number of great yoga teachers in the first few months. One day after class, the teacher asked me if I had ever been to the gentle class at the Yoga Circle. I had heard of this class from a friend but had never attended. The class sounded very interesting and exactly what I was looking for since it stressed the adaptation of poses. It was a class in which an apprentice of the teacher Gabriel Halpern worked with you one to one. It was not a private or a special yoga therapy class; it was just another yoga class on the schedule.
One day in the winter of 2009, I decided to give the class a try. The Yoga Circle is an Iyengar yoga studio. Iyengar yoga is a style of yoga that is based upon precise anatomical alignment. As I walked into the studio, I was shocked by the amount of props they had. Not only did the studio have the basic yoga props such as blankets, bolsters, blocks, and straps, but it had many others—all with the purpose to get the yoga practitioner in the form of the pose that’s right for their body. I remember feeling a little like a beginner in that first class because Gabriel wanted me to do basic poses. In my mind, I was an experienced yoga practitioner, practicing yoga for six years before coming that day. After class I asked Gabriel what other classes on the schedule would suit my needs. He recommended that I just do the gentle class for now until I learned more about how to adapt the poses for my body. This hurt my ego since I had been practicing for years and had modified poses to the extent I needed to benefit my body, or at least I thought I had.
Although my ego was bruised and I did not stop going to other yoga classes, I started going to the Yoga Circle on a weekly basis. There I learned how to adapt my poses on a whole new level, a level that required me to be more observant of the needs of my body. The props were there to support me, and I was encouraged to use them as needed to maximize the integrity of my yoga practice. I found a better understanding of my body. Let me give you an example to better explain what I mean. In supta padangusthasana (a supine hamstring stretch) one leg is lifted straight up in the air and the other is extended straight out on the ground. If you cannot reach the toe of the foot that is extended in the air, you can loop a belt around the foot and hold both ends of the belt. This would be the adaptation encouraged in most yoga classes. However, Iyengar yoga takes the adaptation further so that the practitioner is supported. The way I would do this pose is lying down with my feet pressing against a wall. The back of my grounded leg is supported by a folded blanket since it does not reach the ground, and I place a block against the wall so I can really press through the foot. Then I loop a belt around the other foot and raise that leg only to point where I can still keep it straight.
This kind of attention to detail made my practice stronger. I felt more integrated within my body with the emphasis on alignment and creating a stronger mind-body connection. Not only was I gaining greater body awareness, but I was gaining greater mental awareness of my practice and other areas of life off the yoga mat.
Sharing Yoga with Others
From the time I discovered how to use adaptation, I wanted to take yoga teacher training and bring adaptive yoga to others. Until I came to Yoga Circle, I didn’t feel I was ready to delve into a teacher training, even though I had attended many workshops with master teachers and had taken a portion of a teacher training for my own knowledge. It was all of my combined experiences in yoga that gave me the confidence to finally make the commitment. I know that anyone can do a yoga teacher training, but to me it was very important to have a strong practice and understand yoga on and off the mat.
Another thing that contributed to my decision to take teacher training and bring my knowledge of yoga to students was reading Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, by Matthew Sanford. Matthew sustained a spinal cord injury when he was in a car accident at age 13. While he was in traditional rehabilitation, doctors and therapists told him to focus on regaining strength in his upper body and that he would never regain control in his lower body. Thus, the medical field told him to ignore his lower body.
Matthew went through life feeling like there was always something missing. He believed that control of his lower limbs was possible, but he did not know how to access this control—that is, until he discovered yoga. Through yoga, Matthew was able to establish a mind-body connection and once again have a fully integrated body. This is something that I can relate to in my own body, moving through yoga in a way that I never experienced before. Matthew went on to become an Iyengar yoga teacher and create Mind Body Solutions, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to awaken the connection between the mind and body.
Even though I knew that yoga could benefit everyone, there was a part of me that questioned if I could become a certified yoga teacher as a person with a disability. How would I demonstrate the correct form of yoga poses? How would I adjust students? How would I keep students safe?
The answer to how I would teach was really quite simple and was staring me in the face all along: I would adapt teaching to my abilities. The goal is still to give students the best experience possible, but I have to respect my abilities while doing it. This may mean I teach seated yoga or use words to adjust students rather than touch. If I’m teaching an adaptive yoga class to people of different abilities, I have assistants to help students get into the yoga poses. My goal when teaching is not to impress students by doing an advanced form of a yoga pose; instead, my goal is to get them into a pose safely and correctly so they are able to receive the benefits of the pose.
The teacher training that I took at Prairie Yoga was exactly what I was looking for. It encouraged adaptation, proper alignment, and great overall teaching skills. I felt as if it gave me a solid foundation to teach students and taught me a great deal about my own practice.
Teacher training is just one step in my yoga journey and there is still much left to learn as a yoga practitioner. My collective yoga experience is what got me to where I am today. The only way I am going to be a successful yoga teacher and student, especially with adaptive yoga, is to continue learning. Everyone has a unique body, thus there is no single adaptation of a pose that fits all. Each yoga practitioner needs to practice yoga based on their ability, remembering there is no right or wrong expression of yoga.
Ryan McGraw is a yoga teacher and advocate for people with disabilities. He also holds a master’s degree in disability and human development. As a person with a disability himself, Ryan believes that yoga can be made accessible and be adapted for people of all abilities. He feels that everyone should be able to receive the benefits of yoga. Author photo by Karen McGraw.