Yoga with my Mom

My mother got her certification as a yoga teacher in 2008, at age 56. How cool is that?!

Although she first did yoga in the 70's and has been fit all her life, my mom only really started to practice Yoga seriously in her 50's. One of her main motivations was the back pain she experienced from her S-shaped scoliosis, which progressed to "moderate" in her 40's. As many others have found, the only thing that really relieved her pain was Yoga.

Mom started teaching yoga to others (including me!) at lunchtimes in the office, and her love for teaching grew from there. In 2008 she went to Rikishesh, India, and completed her teacher training with a Canadian-based Indian yogi.

My mom has an incredibly serene and grounded practice. She practices with such grace and focus, and seems to just fold effortlessly into a full paschimottanasana or upavista konasana. She believes in a personalised approach to Yoga practice and has been studying the harmony between Yoga and Ayurveda, looking at yoga sequences designed for particular doshas (I wrote a little about these a while back, as you can see here) or to balance the doshas. Some of her widsom I hope to share soon on this blog!!

Anyway, one afternoon on the beach we thought we'd take some partners yoga pictures! It was such a fun experience, so above are some of our best results. It was really hard to do some of the poses because of the slope of the beach and the uneven sand, so our poses are not exactly picture-perfect, but you can see the huge grins on our faces. (I think the one of Tree is really funny because my mom is actually about a foot taller than I am but she was standing on the slope below me so we look the same height). She also helped me practice my handstand in the open... See some successes and failures of that below! It was so helpful to have her guiding me... I worked on engaging my shoulders and my core more and felt pretty happy with the result - a freestanding handstand! Still so much work to do before I will be able to come up into it without first falling backwards... But I feel like I got a taste of how it will work!



I think it's a wonderful blessing that we both share a love for yoga... although possibly a curse for everyone else around us because we talk about it all the time!! :)

Namaste~

Downward-facing Tree

7 months ago I started working on handstand (adho mukha vrksasana - downward facing tree pose. Go figure.) Now, I have never been gymnastically inclined. I could never do a backflip, or a cartwheel (still can't!), or any elegant combination of those things. So given that, I think it would be fair to say that I brought little experience but lots of baggage with me when I began this pose.

Sometimes the hardest part of learning something new is un-learning all the things you learned before.

In my mind, I can feel this pose. I can sense the muscles in my body as I place my palms on the floor, pressing down through the fingertips, and then lift one leg up to the sky and hop ever-so-smoothly and rise up, my lower back curving, my muscles engaged, my feet lifting towards the sky! In my mind.

Back in the real world and firmly rooted in my body, however, it is a whole different experience. My courtship with handstand has been neither graceful nor smooth. It has been a hard, sweaty, teeth-gritting experience. It has been a grueling and inelegant process of throwing myself towards an unforgiving wall and heavily crashing back to earth. There has been sweat. There have been grunting and angry noises. There has been frustration, and oh yes, there have been tears.

There have been sacrifices, many of them on the part of my partner, who time after time has stood behind me and dodged my wildly flinging legs in an attempt to catch me in the pose. She learned handstand at the advanced age of about 7, and used to walk on her hands in the front yard. She, as rational a being as has ever walked on two hands, cannot understand the fear. It goes something like this:

her: "you can totally do this pose!"
me: "I know. but I can't!"
her: "why not?"
me: "I don't know! I don't trust the wall to catch me."
her: "but the wall has to catch you! it can't go anywhere!"
me: "yes. no! I'm afraid."
her: "but you know you can do it, and you know the wall is here!"
me: "yes. but I'm afraid."

At some point in Yoga, we have to confront our fear. It is part of the flow. It is deeply entwined with the journey we are on. It manifests to us in a thousand different variations, each deeply personal to the wide-eyed traveler. It is one of the most daunting things we can do as an adult. Sure, we cope with fear when it comes upon us in extreme situations. That is one thing. But intentionally seeking out your fear and confronting it - that is a whole different experience. At the end of the day, we are alone in our fear. Fear shatters our ego and the delusions we make about ourselves. It is up to us to try, fail, cope with failing, and try again. Until one day, yes, we lift up through the fear, and in spite of the fear, we rise.

So after 7 months, yes, I finally am able to kick up into handstand against a wall. But each time I do it (or, so often, don't) I still have to move through my fear. Each time is as intimidating as the first time I faced that wall. And each time I don't make it (and there are still so many!), I am still deeply confronted by the feeling of failure, and frustration. Even when we are successful, fear is not finished with us. It is a part of life, and it is here to stay.

So, what is a girl to do? Each time, I have to breathe, and keep on breathing and move on, moving either buoyed by my success or depressed my failure, but moving inexorably nonetheless. Leaving it to try another day. Coming back to my centre and remembering that I am not here to measure myself against what I can or cannot do, but what I tried to achieve. Reminding myself that you never know who you truly are until you know yourself in the face of a challenge. That is a tree facing downwards. That is Yoga.