The wisdom I once knew

Yoga teacher training is giving me lots that I want to write about - and no time to write in. I hope these posts that are rattling around in my head will eventually make it here. Some of the things I've been learning seem new; other ideas are realizations that I've been reaching towards for some time but have only just found within my grasp. Still other ideas seem like things I knew once but thought I had forgotten.

Photo Credit: Tela Chhe/ Flickr Creative Commons

We all learned to walk once. From our positions on the floor, we were driven to grasp nearby objects and pull ourselves upright. In that position, we had to use our muscles in new ways, figuring out how to stabilize joints and stack our bones. Even then, with some measure of stability, we weren't satisfied. We had to walk, and then run - learning to keep it all together and balance in a constantly shifting world. We moved too fast, leaned too far, and fell - often, and sometimes painfully. We howled when we hit our heads on the corners of tables and scraped our hands and knees - but the next opportunity, we pulled ourselves upright and ran headlong into the next disaster, fearless, until we learned to feel our own center of balance and remain steady on our feet.

Photo Credit: Neeta Lind/ Flickr Creative Commons

Now, many years later, most of us don't remember how we learned to walk. We're blissfully unaware of the painful headlong falls, and we have no conscious memory of how we learned to balance on our feet. When it comes to balancing upside down - on your head or hands or forearms - it may seem like something completely new. As I try to understand the limits of my balance in inversions, however, I'm realizing that I have done this all before. I've already been through this process of challenging the force of gravity, of learning to stack all the bones in my body on top of each other, of finding the point of lightness and effortless balance in a seemingly impossible vertical position. Somewhere, in those deep hidden places in the body where forgotten memories go, I know how to learn this.

Back then, those hurtling falls didn't faze me for long. Now, when I reach too far with my legs and come crashing to the ground, I'm left with a lingering fear that sends me back to basics, just trying to straighten my legs into the air again. Somewhere deep inside, I need to connect with the toddler me - that little girl who wanted so badly to walk around, who had such incredible confidence to try again, who had not yet learned to dwell on past failures. In my practice, I'm seeking the simplicity of being of a child. I'm striving to bring in a little innocence to balance my wisdom, to infuse beginner's mind into these poses. I want to do them with all the knowledge I've gained from my previous attempts, but also with the openness that comes with trying something for the first time.

Surely part of the practice is to walk, run, dance, balance on your head, and love as though you've never been hurt, never fallen down, never cracked your head against the corner of a table. To be fully present through the falling and the getting back up, and then to be fully present in the next attempt - as though falling last time had nothing to do with what will happen this time - because it doesn't, in fact, as hard as that is to believe. Maybe that's all of the practice in fact, all the work there really is to do. I'm starting to think that it will be enough.

Tremendous confidence

Life has taken me away from this blog for a while - which overall is a very good thing, since life is much more important than blogging! What brings me back is a mantra I've been considering recently, something that one of my teachers says: Have tremendous confidence that you can. She usually says this right before we do something the mind warns is impossible, like standing on our heads. I love this mantra because often confidence (or lack thereof) is the only thing standing between me and what I want. I love it because the phrase tremendous confidence acknowledges how challenging it can be to believe, how much effort is needed to act on faith. I love it because I can feel the difference it makes in my body, in my mind, in my breath.

Recently, I viewed myself in a video from Jason Crandell's workshop at the Ojai Yoga Crib in 2007:



It's amazing to watch myself practice as I was two years ago. Almost from the beginning, I've loved Vrksasana (Tree Pose) and have felt at home in it. Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose) was a whole different story. Around the time of this video, I was referring to this pose as "my nemesis." The video features me falling in Ardha Chandrasana... on both sides. I'm struck by a couple of things when I see this video. First of all, by how different I now feel in my body when I do Ardha Chandrasana - sensations of ease, grace, lightness. And secondly, by the fact that in this video, it is visibly clear that I had learned to take myself into a posture in which I knew I would probably fall, to practice with joy in the face of great challenge. But I had not yet learned to have tremendous confidence that I could do the pose without falling, in spite of past history and rational or irrational fears.

I feel myself sometimes at this same crossroads in my life off the mat: willing to face challenge with a smile, but at the same time, lacking the confidence to just act without fear. In trying to break old patterns, whether it's falling in Ardha Chandrasana or holding your truth back in a relationship, sometimes you can spend too much time examining the pattern - and the more you look at it, the more it repeats itself. Sometimes the key might be to forget about the pattern, forget that you have ever been in a similar situation before, tap into that tremendous confidence, and step into the pose. With grace. And breath. Breath never hurts either.

When I see myself falling in 2007 and then feel myself lifting into Ardha Chandrasana in 2009, it gives me hope. Maybe the things that seem challenging now in my life will be second nature to me in two years. On second thoughts, I'll drop the "maybe." The things that seem challenging now in my life will be second nature to me in two years. I have tremendous confidence that I can.