It’s probably good advice to leave egos behind in most situations. In yoga, it can mean the difference between a solid practice, and a painful practice. (Figuratively, and literally.) Further, egos are really the antithesis of one of the many benefits of yoga. Personally, I cannot imagine feeling okay with oneself, and at peace, while carrying around a large ego. But, that’s just me.

Earlier, I mentioned that it was important to focus on yourself, not what others are doing. I correlated this to my tendency toward being competitive in physical activities. And, although this does directly link back to a strong ego, it’s not the full picture.

You’ll probably see several posts that are closely linked to this topic. There is a great reason for this: it’s very important to embrace that yoga is about what you’re comfortable doing for you. If you are decide you’re ready for a chaturanga, by all means, try. If you don’t know, by all means, try. If you’re doing it because the instructor and 95% of the other people in the class are doing it, and you feel you have to do it, evaluate your decision.

For example, personally, I do not have any problems with chaturangas. It’s intuitive for me to go from a high-plank to a chaturanga. Holding takes a great deal of strength, and awareness. Do one wrong, you can end up with very sore (or injured!) wrists, a tweaked lower back, very sore triceps the next few days, and probably other things I cannot think of–oh yeah, sore shoulders. My point here is that you really should be ready for the pose…physically and mentally.

I mentioned above that it takes a great deal of awareness. Listen to your body. If, for example, you feel that you have too much stress on your back, you’re probably not engaging your abs sufficiently. Sore wrists? You’re probably not going forward enough with your spine/torso–or, maybe too much. Sore shoulders? You might not be hugging your arms into your torso, and pointing your triceps backwards. Doing all of these things simultaneously takes a lot of awareness–and thought. Eventually, like all yoga poses, it becomes intuitive.

Getting back to the tie-in with egos. It’s not important to anyone in that room–even the instructor–if you do a chaturanga. It might be important to you, but like anything new, ease into it. And, nobody in that room is going to laugh at you if you aren’t successful with any pose. (Okay, usually. I did have someone laugh when I lost balance once–but I brushed it off; it didn’t matter, and I probably looked funny. So, he was laughing with me.) If your ego is one where you must do everything perfectly, leave it at the door of your yoga practice. Failure to do so will, without fail, leave you with a sore body, or worse, an injury.