365 days of headstand

A previously little known fact I’m now sharing with the internet: I’m a yoga teacher who is scared of doing a headstand.

Oh, I don’t mind cuing students into sirsasana. I can look at a body moving toward inversion and give pointers on how to get those feet over the head and find steadiness. But when it comes to flipping myself upside down, I freeze like the proverbial deer.

When I was going through yoga teacher training in 2014, this headstand-phobia bothered me. I didn’t think I could possibly be a good yoga teacher if I was scared of a posture, especially one so central to the health of the crown chakra, one I enviously watched others assume with serenity and grace. I confided my angst to one teacher friend, and ion her class she would give me assists. Sometimes her gentle presence behind me worked. Sometimes I didn’t even try, instead opting for child’s pose.

Then in 2015, the torn rotator cuff put me on the sidelines, one I’m just coming off now.

Recently, I’ve been craving inversions. But that old fear got in the way, so much so that I didn’t even want to try. The other night, in a yoga class series I’m taking as part of my goal to get to 100 classes in 2018—experiencing other teachers’s classes helps me grow as a practitioner and instructor—we did partner handstands. And I realized how easy it was to hang out on my hands with the comfort of a spotter.

I came home, positioned myself a few feet from a wall, and got up into headstand. I gave the wall a little tap as I found balance. Then I rejoiced. And quickly fell down. Went up again. The second time was harder. Probably I was thinking too much.

Today is the fourth day in a row that I’ve gone upside down. I’m still keeping the training wheels nearby, but trying to distance myself from that wall a little more each day.

It’s hard to remember in our Type A, over achieving culture that no posture is mastered in a day. Yoga is about patience, time, breath, devotion, body awareness. If I commit to trying a headstand every day for 365 days, I can only imagine the progress I will make. A year from now, I just might be that person chilling out on the top of my head. After all, once upon a time, I never thought I’d write an entire novel, and now I’ve written three. In confronting those things that scare us, we often find they aren’t as insurmountable as they seem.

Namaste.