The world turned upside down
Well I’m going to be honest.
Day 1 of Crafting the Draft is starting at 9pm at night, rather than the avowed “first” thing in the morning.
Womp, womp.
But hey, I’m still on the draft train! And in conjunction with with Day 1 of Crafting the Draft is a simultaneous project (because the best way to start a new habit is to stack it!) to go upside down every day for the next month, with both projects ending on April 14. Going upside down means doing a headstand or handstand, or as a very last resort if extraneous circumstances occur (injury is valid, embarrasement is not), wheel pose (which gymnasts know this as bridge).
There’s several reasons why I’m encouraging myself to go upside down every day:
I build more trust with myself when actively practicing of headstands. Headstands require trust that you can support your body and that scary feeling of having your body in perfect alignment is actually right rather than wrong. Oftentimes with my headstands I’ll go into a banana shape because it feels like I’m in control by exerting so much effort in keeping my body up, when in reality my headstand would feel (and look) so much better if I trusted myself with that weightless feeling of being perfectly in alignment.
Tied with the above, there’s something so wonderfully present about being in a headstand. It requires true presence — being right here, right now, so that you can continue to safely be upside down, conducting minor adjustments to your body and core as need be. In a way it’s its own form of medtitation.
There’s something wonderful about looking at the world while upside down — a shift in perspective, a new lens, a reframe of what is and what could be.
It’s an interesting experiment on letting go of thoughts of what people will think of me. Who cares! It’s just a woman doing a headstand. (To be fair, in New York no one would bat an eye because it’s New York and crazier shit happens on the streets whereas it feels like people do look and stare in Sydney, but they don’t act in a malevolent way (as evidenced by the couple next to me during today’s headstand).
Prior to yoga teacher training, I’d only done tripod headstands where I was resting a significant amount of body weight on my head, which I’ve since learned is a huge no-no — the top of your skull is fragile, so it’s not a great idea to put your entire bodyweight on it. Instead, a headstand should have all of your bodyweight pressed through your forearms and only a smidgen of weight on your head — so little that a piece of paper could slide through.
I did headstands many times through the training: I could get myself “up” (upside down?) but I couldn’t get my body into a straight line. Instead, my body would continue to curve like a banana so that my legs and feet leaned towards my torso rather than directly above. The instructors would tell me that I needed to bring my feet back (“back, back, back!”) in order to create a straight long line from head to feet, but that felt scary. I could feel my body instinctively react in fear to the brief weightlessness that would come in the short moments when my feet would ever so quickly hover directly over my body — that’s when I’d step out of the headstand onto the safety of the ground.
But the breakthrough came when I finally began to tune in to my body — to take a breath, pause, and let go of any attachment to whatever result came to pass. To feel that deep sense of internal knowing and let my body to guide me through this practice. To finally trust myself and understand that I knew what I was doing, all along.
