Strength and Courage Through Yoga
The last couple classes with Abhijata were examples of how we can build strength and courage through our practices of yoga. Just step-by-step and without so much second guessing, so much is possible! Our minds get in the way of so much we are actually capable of, so given the chance to “just try”, we can break through barriers we might already expect. As Prashant reminds us, to think you “cannot do” already ceases any progress to be made. It is better to try, and whatever percentage is achieved is a percentage more than you had before.
After the engaging and intense Geeta class on Tuesday morning, I wondered what we would be doing that evening, secretly hoping for some “recovery”. However, that was obviously not the plan! Abhi took us through a very nice step by step process of how she would get students away from the wall in Sirsasana and I will be eager to try it out on many of you who, even after so many years, continue to “go to the wall” to “balance”. The strength needed to pull our legs off the floor and balance without fear is not built by just kicking and kicking from momentum alone. Hoping for the best to balance at the wall, we cheat ourselves out of this needed ground work of shoulder and core strength, not to mention the courage just to be free from the wall.
In the “already balancing Sirsasana batch”, we worked on Pinchamayurasana (elbow balance) in the middle of the room, so I built courage around being able to fall backward from that without fear. Drop-overs from Sirsasana along with Dwi Pada Viparita Dandasana in the middle of the room followed. Of course the assistants are there to help the timid, but there is not a lot of tiptoeing around these poses. Everyone is there to try and no one gets out of giving it a “go”. Courage is needed and/or found, and strength is built in every process.
This morning we continued with back arches. We had two “batches” – one of Urdhva Mukha Svanasanas and Chatturanga Dandasana “flow”, the other rope movement. With her usual “just do it” attitude, Abhi followed up with everyone in the middle of the room just trying to push up into Urdva Danurasana – no walls, no bricks, no nothing for the first few. Only after the first attempts did those still struggling get bolsters to push up from. Meanwhile, “the advanced batch” got to do standing back arches – with or without help. I am always ignited in strength and courage to drop over into Urdhva Danurasana from standing. However, I have had to find some courage around this back arch on the ropes where we stand on the middle hooks and arch backward. We have done this now a couple of times this month, so it has lost some of the terror of hanging and arching so high up. But, trusting my hands and elbows and having faith and courage in their strength has been a barrier I have been working to get over.
In the end, no matter what “batch” we were in, we all were sweaty and happy and heart-filled! Growth is always possible if we allow space for it!
(Photo montage is my first attempt at dropping over from Sirsasana II in a Gulnaaz class during COVID – I still have some fear around it if I am by myself, but the memory of strength and courage remains)
