Practice makes perfect. How many times have you heard that before? But is it true?
I had a guitar teacher who used to say, "Perfect practice makes perfect."
I was learning to play scales on my guitar, and I had trouble with certain finger positions. My instructor asked me to practice picking up speed. I could play certain parts pretty fast. I would go along playing smoothly, and then I would stumble over this particular pattern. He stopped me and said to slow everything down again and keep going over the part I was having trouble with until I could get it perfectly. I could go only as fast as I could play it perfectly. He said that if I kept playing it the way I was practicing it, I would simply reinforce the same mistake over and over, and that is how I would play it. It made sense to me, and my ability to play those particular patterns improved.
The same thing happens in our yoga practice. We want to get our hamstrings to stretch more and we keep trying, but we don't seem to be getting anywhere. When this happens, you have to stop and look at what you are doing.
The first thing you have to ask yourself is are you being consistent? It takes repetition and consistency to change a pattern or habit, to lengthen your hamstrings or to deepen a back bend, let's say.
The other thing you have to look at is how are you practicing? Are you trying to speed ahead to get somewhere but stumbling over certain parts?
Often when we aren't progressing in our practice, it's because we are doing something wrong; we are out of alignment somewhere. That's the perfect time to slow down and really pay attention to what we are doing and how we are doing it.
One of the most common problems in folding forward is rounding in the back rather than hinging at the hips. As long as we round in our backs, our hamstrings will not be getting the stretch they need to lengthen. But, most students either don't know that they are rounding in their backs, or they don't want to back up and sit up straighter because they feel like they are not folding forward. They tend to want to skip over that part.
Every time I felt stuck in my yoga practice, where I felt that I wasn't making progress, the thing that helped the most was slowing down, backing up and starting over. By doing so, I was able to notice where I was stumbling over certain parts. I could smooth them out and practice them more perfectly. This is where progress is made.
It's not simply repeating something over and over. It's how we repeat the thing we are trying to practice.
Whenever you feel stuck in your yoga practice; slow down, back up and really pay attention to what you are doing and how you are doing it.
See if perfect practice makes perfect for you. And then settle in and practice.