Humans like to complicate simple matters. One of the points I observed during a yoga workshop I attended this past weekend at the Sun Festival.
When one of the teachers asked the class how to unblock our chakras (something like energy channel within one's body) and have a ache-free body and led a worry-free lifestyle. Answers given from the students ranged from pranayana (breathing exercises), meditation to practising the asanas. Boy, people do like to complicate matters and sound so sage-like. My answer was totally unrelated to yoga. It was just being happy and laughter. To me, there is something more to yoga than the external motion of perfecting the asanas. There is this inner detox of the mind. The stillness of the mind, and not being too caught up by the daily stresses of life.
Next, standing backbends! They absolutely terrify me. There is something unnerving about bending backwards while standing upright to landing on my palms on the floor behind me.
Fear grips me. My heart races, muscles tense and I always hope that I will miraculously land safely without hurting myself. It is really a long, long drop back and I don't like going to see my chiropracter for a sprained back. Don't tell me about the theories of backbends and the ease of executing the pose. At that tensed moment, my mind is blank and all I can think of is, 'I am so afraid of falling.' Teachers have said that I should be able to do it as my lumbar area is flexible but I have to overcome this hurdle myself. I used to end up grabbing the poor teacher half way through the pose risking injury to myself and the teacher (Sorry, Kym and Asokan). Trust me, I am not exactly that light.
Fear is irrational. Even with controlled bending, bending backwards into the unknown without seeing where I am heading to cripples me. I can go on and on about this fear but during the workshop, I did it. I have not done standing backbends for a very long time. Something in me changed in this one year since I stopped work. There were several milestones reached in my yoga practice. I had a bad fall a few years back while doing the handstand which built this irrational fear of all inversions and backbends. I avoided practising difficult inversions and backbends since that fall especially if it is a combination of both. I always believe the practice of yoga somehow relates and affects how one lives her life. While resting at home, I did a mind detox and figured out what I am afraid of? For both yoga and life, three points came to mind. Falling, failure, the unknown. By changing my mindset, I have progressed and changed, my priorities definitely have shifted. The only hurdle is my mind.
Further on backbends, I learnt that my heart chakra is blocked or not smooth flowing which probably resulted in my struggles in doing the heart opening asanas like the fear-inducing standing backbends. I used to think some poses are executed through strength but I was proved wrong again. No more caffeine-driven yoga practices. I think I am starting to understand what my teachers meant by lightness from within while practising the many different asanas. This lightness lesson is more pronounced in Bakasana (crane pose) for me.
Another teacher talked about Yoga should not be always about doing the asanas in perfect alignment, it is more about mediation, the breath while doing the asanas. He demostrated the difference by getting three students with similar body type doing the bow pose together. There is a remarkable contrast from a student who does the pose like it was an aerobic movement and the one who ease into the pose. The contrast of breath and the muscle tension between the three examples were really stark and enlightening. It really did not matter whether one is more flexible, or stronger, it really was in the mind and breath.
Yoga surprises me with the new things it teaches about myself with each passing year.
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