Unassisted headstand: accomplished!
I first started doing yoga in high school: my mom thought it would be good therapy after my first knee surgery. I thought it was boring, preferring to spend my time on “real” work-outs that involved a lot of high-energy cardio and weights sessions that left me dripping with sweat. However, I threw a nighttime yoga class into my schedule throughout high school and college every once in a while when I was worn out or in need of a good stretch.
Even as I did sunrise yoga more regularly in college, I still couldn’t figure out how to turn my brain “off” during class and often left early to skip shivasana, thinking it was a waste of time. I also usually took up a child’s pose during any inversion poses: headstands, handstands, shoulder stands. I hated the sensation of being upside down: it’s such a change of perspective that it is literally uncomfortable.
It wasn’t until my month of yoga in Bali that I started to embrace inversion, that I started to crave the mind-clearing focus of being upside down. And it wasn’t until doing yoga regularly at my studio in Williamsburg this fall that I realized it was more fear holding me back than core strength.
So I committed to doing an unassisted headstand in 2013. I practiced in a corner of my room before I went to bed: free of judgment and distractions, unworried about falling over in the middle of a class or crashing into someone else. Sometimes I used the wall, sometimes I fell. And then, finally, in mid-February, I did it–and it felt incredible to accomplish something because I committed to it.
The thing is, yoga to me has never been about looking good in swimsuits (that’s what Pilates is for!). It’s more about a very physical sense of accomplishment, achieving mental clarity and calmness. I remember the days when I couldn’t touch my toes, would laugh at the thought of doing crow pose: it’s incredible to me how committing to my yoga practice has physically changed my body and my “limitations” while also reminding me of just how much I can still achieve.
So, I can check doing an unassisted headstand off my list of 2013 resolutions–although, in the true spirit of yoga, I know that I can only get better at it the more I do it. Next up: hand stand!
