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!