Two months ago I participated in a yoga workshop with Mado that was dedicated to working on handstands. One of my personal goals for this year has been to work on kicking up into a handstand. Note that the goal is to do the working on, not necessarily achieving, the perfect handstand. This subtle shift in the semantics of the goal setting is actually what I think the key is to making me stick with it.
Last winter I wrote to my fellow unravellers about the fear that resides in my inability to kick up and how it trips me up emotionally. I feel so heavy and weak and as if what is holding me back is not physical strength but is rather emotional weight that I can't release, no matter how hard I try. So to sign up for a whole workshop in which I face this fear felt, well, rather daunting. What the workshop offered me was a whole bunch more tools to use to work up to kicking up, some tricks to meanwhile enjoy the benefits of a handstand without the fear rising, and the gift that comes when you share your fears with others who carry the same.
So 2010 has become the year of the handstand for me. and maybe it will be next year too. this process encompasses so much more than just being a yoga pose on which I am working. whether being supported by a bathroom doorway, walking my feet up the logs of our cabin, or being free to fall by the oceanside expanse of sand, I am showing up. over and over. and as the strength builds I feel the emotional weight slowly releasing and the effort giving way to a sense of ease. effort into ease. i like the sound of that. and I remind myself that the only way,in all of our journeys, is to keep showing up.
PS. I will return next week after LEAF with photos and tales from this wonderful multi-cultural arts and music festival just down the road.
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