Posts Tagged ‘headstand’
Have a great fall
Leslie on 3:12 pm April 27th, 2010 / 2 Comments »
I’ve been thinking a lot about walls, real and imaginary. In yoga, a wall can be used as a prop — for restorative poses such as viparita karani — and as a tool for teaching alignment and balance in standing poses and inversions. (Triangle and half-moon with your back body against the wall? Delicious.)
Walls can also be used for defensive purposes. (See: China, Berlin.) As such, they can become self-defeating blockades, keeping out as much good stuff as they contain. In yoga, a wall can be a tool of support — or a needless crutch.
So when is time to move away from the wall, particularly when learning inversions such as headstand, handstand and pincha mayurasana? After much practice, of course. How do you build confidence in these poses? With much practice, of course. But as a teacher trainee, I wonder about walking the edge between progress and safety.
(Digression: I’m reminded of a Far Side cartoon. Humpty Dumpty is sitting on a wall, smiling and waving at his mother as she walks away. She says something like: “As always, Hump, you be careful!”)
In the past year I took classes with a teacher who taught preps for headstand, handstand and pincha on the mat, away from the wall. He wanted us to cultivate core awareness, among other things, and not rely on muscling or hopping up into inversions with our legs. His theory is that it is actually harder to find the right alignment and balance by swinging up into a wall, just for the satisfaction of getting up, and then trying to balance.
This approach really turned my experience of learning inversions upside down, no pun intended, and it goes against everything I’ve been taught in Iyengar classes and the instructions on “Light on Yoga,” which are very beginner-friendly. In one class, this teacher had us all try cartwheeling across the floor to learn a safe way of falling out of handstand. But it occurred to me that I’ve never been in a class in which a teacher has demonstrated how to fall out of headstand or pincha (granted, it’s harder to fall out of pincha). Maybe because I’m not practicing away from the wall, it doesn’t matter yet. In headstand instructions in “LoY,” Mr. Iyengar says to keep the hands loose if and when this happens and just roll out with a smile. Sounds easy enough. But my fear is greater than my confidence. Not fear of falling per se, but of getting hurt.
Have you ever been taught how to fall out of an inversion? For teachers, is this something you teach? Or is this like saying, “Go sit in the corner, and don’t think about elephants”?
A royal pain
Leslie on 4:13 pm April 21st, 2010 / 3 Comments »
I’m curious about the energetic differences between backbends and forward bends and how they relate to one’s affinity for and ability in headstand (the so-called king of all poses) vs. shoulderstand (the queen).
A very sweet and influential teacher whom I’ve studied with, Aadil Palkhivala, says that “energetically, backbends move you from the past into the present” and “open the three major energy centers in the body: the pelvis, the heart and the throat.”
Backbends and headstands are energizing and, let’s say, extroverted poses. Forward bends and shoulderstand are calming and, let’s say, introverted. So if I’m drawn more toward the latter set and they are easier, does that mean I’m stuck in the past? Am I overindulging a dosha? If backbends and headstands are much harder, am I resisting living in the moment? Am I afraid of something besides falling over and breaking my neck (a very real fear, by the way)? Am I constipated, heartless and choking on myself in every way? Or do I simply have physical limitations and sit at a desk too much?
This becomes a chicken and egg question. I do have some spinal issues that present very real problems in backbends. Did the physical issues come first, perhaps at birth, and manifest in my personality? Or has my personality, which tends toward the introverted and melancholic (but this was not always so!), had an effect on my body? For me, backbends feel like “undoing.”
If I judge myself based on the quality of my headstand, the message would be “I suck.” But I am not my headstand, or any other pose. Donna Fahri says, “When we realize that what we are advancing toward is not some physical form but an inward recognition of the truth of who we are, then we will not feel ourselves to be failing if we cannot attain difficult postures. ‘Advanced’ practice is any movement that brings us closer to this recognition of our true self.” I can live with that.
I have a Slinky on my desk at work, opened from one end to the other in a rainbow shape. I pick it up now and then and jiggle it from side to side and stretch it out straight. I’d like to feel like that in backbends and headstand, that loose but coiled energy.
What is your experience of energy in backbends (headstand) and forward bends (shoulderstand)? Is one set naturally harder than the other? How do you practice the harder set?
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