I am a yoga teacher not an acrobat or contortionist.
I have been saying this for years, in fact, I will say it proudly, I am not a contortionist, acrobat, gymnast and so on, I am none of those things. I am a yoga teacher and a yoga teacher who loves learning about anatomy, kinesiology and many other healing modalities, but I am not learning acrobatics or gymnastics. There all great, but I will repeat I am a yoga teacher
The article below, speaks to many of the feelings I had as a new teacher. The good thing is, I am not a new teacher anymore.
After over 10 years and lots of soul searching, I have come to the realization for myself, that I am not interested in doing crazy things with my body, I am interested in feeling good in my body! This is not to say, I am not working hard on things. I see all these yoga selfies of people doing all kinds of amazing things with their bodies and now wonder what those same bodies will be like in 20 years. I am not saying that they will be hurting or have problems, I have no idea, I just wonder. I see people in there 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond with all kinds of issues, and hip replacements, knee and shoulder issues, etc from all kinds of things that they have been doing with their bodies. I am interested in feeling as good as I can as long as I can and I feel pretty sure doing excessive things with the body is not great in the long term.