Wednesday, January 09, 2002


that huge crashing sound you hear is me falling over . . .or will my server problems keep me from publishing this today??

i go to yoga classes several times a week, as you all know, and often we practice what i find to be a very difficult and frustrating pose, salamba sirsasana or headstand. it's not hard to do in and of itself, but coming up away from the wall is tricky for me. i'm fine drawing both knees into the chest with the feet of the floor, tight in a little ball. the tough part for me is from that position on -- the slight shift of the pelvis backward that lifts your legs, bringing your heels to your rear. that's the moment i fall right over backwards.

this problem nags at me a bit, so i took a private lesson where we spent some time in headstand. if the teacher put even her index finger on my sacrum, i was fine: i could lift up and balance briefly in headstand. that's when i realized my real problem wasn't my bad balance, as i had long thought. rather, it was that i had no sense of the back of my body. being upside down, i suddenly couldn't tell where i was in space; so i stuck my pelvis too far backward, leading to comical pratfalls. these repeated falls in turn lead to a slight fear of the pose.

and i suddenly understood all the emphasis yoga teachers had always placed on developing an awareness of the back body in all the poses. so, my friends, i urge all of you to start working on that back body feeling. trust me, it will make your progress in inversions much faster and combat the fear factor!

posted by fortune | 12:46 PM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments