A Body in Motion: Yoga with Erb's Palsy

In a yoga class, you usually start with a pose called Sukhasana. Sit with your legs crossed, back straight, and hands resting comfortably on your knees. If you want your practice to feel grounded or introspective, the instructor will say, then rest your hands with your palms facing down. If you want to be receptive, your palms should face up.

My friend took this picture of me looking very Zen indeed on the floor of a dive bar when I was explaining Sukhasana to him.

I love yoga now, but it took me years to get to the point where I can just take a drop-in class without worrying I’ll make a spectacle of myself. My left arm and shoulder are partially paralyzed, visibly smaller and bent in odd directions compared with the hypothetical, uninjured arm that isn’t there.

At first, I struggled to modify the poses and flows to fit my body. When you’re disabled, learning a new physical skill means two processes are happening simultaneously. You have to learn how a typical body would do it while also figuring out how your own body will achieve the same outcome. There are no steps to follow. Every cripple is a pioneer. By listening, brainstorming, stumbling through, trying and failing and trying again, you eventually get there.

At some point, my body takes over. I couldn’t explain to you how I chop vegetables with a crooked wrist and non-opposable thumb, but if you handed me a potato and a knife, we'd both quickly find out.

But a yoga class was scarier to me than a kitchen. It’s a place where you’re seen. At my first-ever class, the instructor singled me out to tell me how glad she was that I’d come. “I think it’ll be really good for you,” she told me earnestly, clasping both my hands in hers. It was meant kindly, of course, but it served as a reminder of how much I stand out when I start to move my body. I’ve gotten a million little such reminders that my body isn’t quite right, spread out over my formative years and into adulthood — people asking what’s wrong, what happened, how do you dress yourself, would you like the number of my uncle the doctor; chastising their kids to avert their eyes; telling you, in earnest, that actually you’re quite pretty. Each comment is like a thread in a veil that separates me from the people around me. They can see me, but only through the fabric, separate and obscured.

At the same time, my vantage point behind the veil lets me observe things about how people understand physical difference. When I can quiet down my own, loud opinions enough to listen, I learn the stories they tell themselves about bodies like mine, to ease their fear of their own bodies’ potential breakdown, or to make meaning out of what they perceive to be misfortune.

Over the years, I’ve found my flow. My downward dog is on my forearms, not my hands. To get to the front of the mat, I do a little leap-frog hop. And when I sit in Sukhasana, I have no choice but to face my left hand palm-up, in the receptive position. My wrist does not rotate the other way.