Monday, January 12, 2009

The World Upside Down

It was back to yoga teacher training this weekend after a lovely break for the holidays. Unfortunately I came down with the same nasty cold that plagued me at Christmas so I was not up to snuff, especially on Saturday. But I soldiered on, mainly because I had no choice - between the Sheep and Wool Festival and the water tower cozy, I have used up all my time off.

On Sunday we were working on inversions in asana training. I freely admit that inversions are the weakest part of my practice. Even in advanced classes it is easy enough to chose alternate poses and avoid the dreaded headstand and so I found myself on the verge of teacher certification without ever, ever in my life, doing a headstand. That is, until last Sunday when (in an advanced class), I thought of how ridiculous this situation was and I forced myself to do it up against the wall. And I did it! Later that week, I did it again in a class. And yesterday, the instructor singled me out for purposes of illustrating How to Teach Headstand to Someone Who is Afraid of Inversions.

To his credit, he has a healthy respect for the benefits of that fear and only used me as an example because I had spoken to him about wanting to improve my inversions. And my fellow classmates were lovely and supportive and so happy for me because - lo - I did balance in the middle of the room in headstand for about 3 whole seconds!

But you know, each time I went back up, I felt less afraid. I am still a long way away from doing headstand away from the wall with confidence and safety but now I know I can do it. I will do it!

And if an old lady like me can do it...you can too!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

how exciting!

LICraftgal said...

Good for you!! Keep on practicing. You are an inspiration.

Unknown said...

Its stupid and corny in some ways, but the Litany from DUNE is true.

I must not fear
FEAR is the mind killer..

(see it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litany_against_fear )