The Pose I Dreaded (and What It Taught Me)

What my practice taught me about dread, resistance, and the stories we tell ourselves

For an authentic listening experience, I have recorded this essay in my own voice. Feel free to listen, or you can read the essay below.

For years of practicing Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, I have always had a struggle pose. It’s the pose that haunts me off the mat and fills me with dread on it, inching closer and closer with each breath of the sequence. Some days, it is enough to make me not even want to get onto my mat. There’s this beauty to the ashtanga sequence that is as much scientific as it is mystical. Practicing the same postures in the same order at the same time every day, 6 days a week, can seem repetitive and boring at first glance. But it is within this ritual of the ashtanga echo chamber that the self becomes exposed, the world falls away, and a deeper meaning is revealed.

In the earlier days of my practice, this energy was focused solely on one pose: Garbha Pindasana. Garbha Pindasana is a posture in the second half of the primary series which involves bringing the legs into padmasana (lotus) and sliding the arms into the space between the legs, balancing on the sit bones with the hands cradling the face for 5 breaths, and then (as if that wasn’t enough) rolling around in a circle from lower back to upper back, for 9 complete rolls aligned with the breath. Finally, the pose ends by coming up onto the hands and balancing on the palms while the arms still remain “handcuffed” (my term, definitely not officially endorsed) into the crook of the legs. Typing that out has me breathless, so just imagine doing it.

My old friend Garbha Pindasana, with help from my dear teacher, Chidandanda. January 2025.

Interestingly, as I continued my practice, Garbha Pindasana became easier, and the dread I felt for the pose faded away. I was no longer spending all my energy thinking about this pose, and I wasn’t dreading it when I got to my mat. In fact, sometimes, I even look forward to checking in with my old friend GP just to see what’s up. The pose works for me now, and I can somehow do it each practice. Honestly, it feels like a miracle. So this should be the end of the story, case closed... right?

Here’s where things get weird.

Once Garbha Pindasana no longer took up all my energy (a title it held for well over two years), my monkey mind decided it was time for a new enemy. The foe we chose was backbending. Suddenly, all my energy focused on learning how to drop back from standing and land in Urdhva Danurasana (aka Wheel Pose). It felt like the scariest thing I had ever done, and each practice started to feel like I was going to war. This didn’t end once I conquered my fear, either. Because then, I had to start the much harder (and, for me, longer) process of learning to stand back up. To make matters worse, backbending comes at the very end of the Ashtanga sequence; this meant that I was now spending my entire practice dreading the very end of practice. Some days, I didn’t even remember how my practice went because the entire time was spent thinking about the impending backbends.

So, as things always go, my backbends improved. I actually got really good at them. And then I started to look forward to them! Yippee! I have something to look forward to during my entire practice! Can’t wait to get to Garbha Pindasana and then backbends! At least, that’s how I imagined things would go.

But wouldn’t you know it, that didn’t happen. Now that my practice was largely very smooth and strong with no official “struggle poses,” my brain did something I never expected. I had a new enemy! And each day, I’d wake up and I’d dread TRIKONASANA.

The Ashtanga Primary Series, which I practice daily with my teacher in Mysore. You can see trikonasana as the 2nd pose on the row labeled "standing sequence"

For those that don’t know, Trikonasana is one of the foundational postures at the beginning of the series. In fact, it is the second pose of the practice after the warm up sun salutations. It’s generally a nice-feeling pose and I have never struggled with it before, but I noticed my mind spending so much time thinking about how to skip Trikonasana, how to make it feel easier, how to spend less time in it. Some days, I’d wake up and think I would skip practice just because I didn’t want to do Trikonasana. But then, I would practice, get past Trikonasana, and the rest of the practice was lovely. This lasted a couple weeks.

And then, my mind shifted. I had a new enemy. Copy/paste. Rinse/repeat. I started to notice this pattern of my mind choosing a pose, seemingly at random, to hate and dread and make excuses about. And then, as soon as I would get past that pose, everything was fine and I loved my yoga practice.

Once I noticed the pattern, I got an idea.

I decided I wasn’t allowed to hate any poses anymore. I decided I didn’t need to have a constant foe. I didn’t need to be going to battle every time I stepped onto my mat. If I was struggling with a pose, I could deal with it when I got to the pose, but the pose was not allowed to take over my practice and my life.

Suddenly, practice got a whole lot easier and a whole lot more pleasant. I started to face my struggles in the moment instead of ruining all the moments by worrying about my struggles. And because of this, my nervous system rewarded me. I felt calmer approaching my challenges on the mat, and I was more successful in conquering them.

Looking forward to the challenges as much as the joy

I know that it is overstated to the point of cliche that what happens on our mat is a metaphor for life. But it’s true. The mat is the laboratory, the place for us to experiment with and experience our inner selves. Once we learn what we need to from the mat, we can take it into the rest of our lives.

So, now, when I am faced with a challenge that is far into the future or seems insurmountable, I remind myself that it is something I cannot spend all my energy on. I don’t need an enemy. I don’t need to be constantly in battle. Life is hard enough. When it comes time to face my challenge, I know I will do fine, just as I have for all the challenges I have faced in life. But I refuse to spend a life dreading the challenges ahead instead of enjoying the experiment and experience that we call life.

If this post resonates with you, you might love my upcoming workshop series, Unstuck & Unstoppable. It’s designed to help you clear what’s in the way, reconnect with your inner voice, and start building the kind of momentum that actually lasts. This article is a small piece of that work—because rebuilding self-trust is one of the first (and most powerful) steps to getting unstuck.

If you’re new here: Hi, I’m Gina. I’m a witch, a professor, and a yogi, currently living in Mysore, India. I help others trust their inner voice, because I’ve spent a long time learning to trust mine. You can learn more about my work at risenm.com.