I remember expecting my body to communicate and feel the way my teachers talked about.
The instructions or cues were always the same: feel this pose here, and that pose there. Notice the “right” sensations in the “right” places. Breathe through discomfort, push through resistance, find ease where there was none. Even an expectation to distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger. For me, this means noticing the difference between being “hangry” when I had forgotten a meal in a flow state, and the Grand Canyon of emptiness when I needed comfort.
But I could not.
And I thought that meant something was wrong with me.
It took a therapist—and a lot of honest, uncomfortable work—to help me recognize the ableist way I was approaching my own sensations. I had been taught to expect my body to function in a way that was never going to be mine. I was shaming myself for not being “normal,” whatever the hell that means.
That was the moment everything shifted. Not because I finally learned to feel things “correctly.” But because I stopped expecting myself to. I started working with what was actually there—my executive function, my neurodivergence, my trauma history, my real body—instead of against it. I started adapting.
That was adaptation. Not a pose. A way of being with myself that honoured my actual, real, neurodivergent, trauma-informed body.
We all have a self—a unique constellation of needs, patterns, gifts, and histories. Function over form invites us to adapt to that self. It asks us to set aside what we think we “should” feel or do and instead meet ourselves where we actually are. That is the work. That is the practice.
And it matters more than perfect alignment.
What Adaptation Actually Means
Adaptation means bringing the practice to the body, not the body to the practice.
This might sound subtle, but it is not. It is the difference between treating the body as something to be fixed and treating it as something to be honoured.
We are not clay that needs molding. Nor are not broken, waiting for the perfect down dog or the right pranayama technique to fix us. We are human beings with human bodies that are imperfect, different, and in constant change. And our job—as teachers, as practitioners, as people—is to honour that.
This is the intelligence of adaptation. Our bodies and our nervous systems have been adapting since before we were born. They adapted to our mother’s environment, to the conditions of our birth, to the family we were born into, to the culture we grew up in, to the stress we experienced, to the safety we did or did not feel. This is how we survived. This is how we continue to survive.
Adaptation is not about making yoga “easier” or “lesser.” It is about meeting the body where it is and working with what is actually there. It is about recognizing that function matters more than form. This is a core principle of Viniyoga—and of trauma-informed yoga, where the focus is on creating safety, choice, and agency rather than forcing the body into a shape it is not ready for.
And sometimes, we can help our body adapt to something new—but only when we approach it with compassion, not force.
Why Alignment Is Not the Point
Our bodies are forever in change. We do not live our lives in perfect alignment. We sleep in weird positions. Then carry bags on one shoulder. We often sit at desks or in stillness for too long. We move through stress, injury, pregnancy, aging, grief, joy, exhaustion. Our bodies adapt to everything we go through.
Alignment has its place. Leaning toward it can help us understand how our body has adapted to our life, how we move through it, and give us tips on how we can support our function. But when alignment becomes the goal, we have lost the point.
Perfectionism is romanticized rigidity. It is a way of saying, “If I just do this one thing right, everything will be okay.” That is not how bodies work. Nor, is not how healing works. That is not how life works.
What matters is function. How do you move through your day? Considering how do you sleep? How do you breathe when you are stressed? How does your body support you in doing the things that matter to you? That is what we care about. That is what we want to support. Not how something looks.
What Adaptation Looks Like in Practice
In a group class, adaptation often looks like offering a couple of options and inviting people to choose the one that meets their needs today. It looks like trusting that they know their own bodies better than we do. It looks like creating a culture where it is safe to choose the “easier” option or to rest altogether.
But here is the thing: offering choices is not enough.
We live in an ableist society. We have internalized messages about pushing through, about no pain no gain, about sleeping when you are dead. For those of us who have been shaped by that culture, simply offering choices is not going to undo years of conditioning. It is not that simple.
The biases run deeper than that. There is the bias that tells us a body that looks a certain way moves a certain way. There is the bias that tells us disability is something to be overcome, not something to be accommodated. Bias that tells us bigger bodies need to shrink, that smaller bodies need to be “fixed,” that bodies with chronic pain or illness are broken and need to be healed. There is the bias that tells us if you just try harder, you will get better. These messages are everywhere. They are in the culture we grew up in, the media we consume, the yoga classes we have taken, the teachers we have learned from.
And they do not disappear just because we offer a modification.
The work is bigger than the right cue. It is about the culture we create, the space we create, and the things we normalize and validate. It is about recognizing that for some people, being asked to choose can feel overwhelming or unsafe. Which requires us to be patient, consistent, and willing to repair. For us to be consistently examining our own biases; about ability, about size, about what a “yoga body” looks like, and being honest about how those biases show up in our teaching.
This is not about getting it right. It is about staying curious, staying humble, and staying willing to learn.
The Invitation
Compassionate inquiry is the starting point. Consider how you think about adaptation. What thoughts, feelings, emotions, and beliefs show up when you consider adapting a pose or a practice? When you see someone else adapt, what comes up for you? And when you yourself need to adapt, what do you notice?
This blog post is not going to resolve everything. This is ongoing work. But we can start leaning into it together.
Try sitting with a few questions:
- What does adaptation mean to you?
- What gets in the way of adapting—for yourself or for your students?
- What would it feel like to trust that your body—and your students’ bodies—know what they need?
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Adaptation is not about making yoga accessible for “other” people. All bodies are different, all bodies change, and all bodies deserve to be met where they are.
That is the heart of Viniyoga.