"Tuck the tailbone under"

Now and again the old "tuck the tailbone under" crops up. I thought I'd mastered it already, but in yin class there has been a lot of talk about tilting the pelvis which I now understand to be just a different way of saying tuck the tailbone under.

Kelly keeps talking about the pelvic tilt when doing the dragonfly pose (yin's version of a Upavistha Konasana) and teaches us that if we sit on right on the edge of a foam block so that it even rises off the floor, we start doing the pelvic tilt. I can see her pelvis do the tilt very clearly, but my pelvis just doesn't work that way.

And then today came a lightbulb moment when I was doing the dragon pose (yin's variation of a runner's lunge) Jason came up to me and told me that instead of going deep into the pose and putting my hands on the floor, I should stay up instead, put my elbow on my knee and "tuck the tailbone under". He even tried to move my hips the way they should go when you tilt the pelvis - but again, my pelvis just doesn't do that movement, not yet anyway.

Kelly and Jason keep saying over and over again, on each class, how we are all different, and while some people can easily do some poses they are next to impossible to some people. This is down to people's different skeletons and joints, and different poses are bound to look very different when different people are doing them. Because in the western world we sit on chairs all of our lives where our backs are supported, our hips are very inflexible. There are no situations where need to open the hips, and when people become tired they slump their backs and then the pelvis automatically tilts back.

Tilting of the hips forward - tucking the tailbone under - needs to be taught to western people all over again. But here's what hit home today: for all pupils this movement will look different. The teacher - without coming to feel your pelvis - can't know how your pelvis is tilted and can only make a rough estimate from afar, and will often compare you to other students. For me, right now, the tilt is hardly noticable - I can sometimes feel it, but not all of the time and I hope to get better at this someday. The move that I was doing before standing up: straightening my spine, is part of the move for me - but it's completely different when I'm sitting down, or doing a headstand upside down.

Good feeling, realising something after so many years.