Fear is an interesting thing. Most of us at some time or another is fearful of something, someone, some place. Perhaps there was a scary basement stairwell you encountered as a child, an intimidating boss, or a move to a new country you can recall that still irks you. A fear that I have been working through for quite some time now is the fear of inverting.
As a child, I would happily walk on my hands along the sandy beaches of Florida making handprints in the soggy sand as the light waves came and went. Not that long ago, I was able to do headstands in the middle of the room with my eyes closed while I was practicing yoga at the Sivananda center in Paris while studying abroad. Now, that fearlessness has mysteriously vanished. While learning the standard triad of headstand, handstand and forearm-stand as I became more and more interested in my asana practice, I clutched willingly and openly to any wall that was available and if none was, then I modified my practice and only did preparatory poses. This crutch at first was both physical and mental. I was not sure how to come up safely in these poses and did not at first have the upper body and core strength necessary to keep me up. However, over time and with precise instruction from wonderful teachers, I was able to come up on my own without the wall in all three of these postures. And yet, I still clutch to the wall. I am scared. I know I am strong enough. I know this because I can come up just far enough from the wall that I will not touch it, but mentally I know it is there and, if I want to, I can touch a toe or two to the hard plaster that reassures me that something other than me will be there if I fall besides the floor, which is always there waiting. As I grow my practice by teaching yoga to others, I am trying very hard to overcome this fear of mine that is now very much all in my head.
I think of this often: every day even. It is a big obstacle, or klesah, around which I must work in order to progress my yoga practice. Sutra 2.3 tells us that the five obstacles, or klesahs, are “ignorance, egoism, attachment, hatred, and clinging to bodily life.”[1] My fear involves all of these obstacles: my ignorance at my own physical strength, my egoism to not allow myself to fall in front of others, my literal attachment to the wall and to my way of inverting in proximity to a hard surface perpendicular to the floor, my hatred (for what a strong word it is) of my reluctance to trust in myself, and my very plain clinging to my bodily life as I imagine an array of spinal injuries and concussions that will occur if I attempt inverting without my life crutch – the wall. It is interesting for me, thus, to observe the moment in classes when it is time to invert. Many teachers have the students come to the wall no matter what – I like those classes too much. Others don’t make the inversions a very big deal and then neither do I as I practice dolphin instead of going up to prophetically fall on the person teetering next to me. And then there was the teacher recently who had us come up in the middle, but only if we knew we could practice safely in the middle – I counted myself out of that group immediately to take the opportunity to work on my form with everyone else – and otherwise to stay with her instructions as she brought us through some preparatory work that would lead to a shorter stay in headstand far away from the wall. Good.
As I happily and determinedly went through the preparatory steps to gain the confidence I needed to bypass the first klesah, the man next to me threw himself into headstand so fast that the teacher came rushing to him to get him out of his unsafe posture. This gave me pause to reflect on our different approaches to inversions: my fear and his hurried excitement. While clinging to bodily life was not exhibited in the least in my neighbor’s practice as he attempted to balance his unbalanced weight on his cervical vertebrae, he was also working with his own obstacles in his own practice and in his own way. While I am not one to pass judgment on how people deal with their own fears, there was something to his eagerness to “just do it” that I so envied, until I thought about how change is really made in each of us.
It is how we deal with our fear that allows us to progress and make changes, hopefully positive ones, on our path toward enlightenment and better living. When we are brought up against our fear – be it social anxiety, a new job, or the seasonal flu – we are given a chance to acknowledge our humanity while accessing our strength, both physical and mental, to minimize the obstacles in our lives. When we meet our fear head-on with intelligence and courage, we can evolve. It is very helpful as you go through this process to seek the help of a mentor or a teacher. More important is the ability to truly trust in your Self and your own abilities and limits. When we step outside of our comfort zones, we come up against a lot of “stuff” for lack of a better term at what we might encounter there. Focusing on the Self that resides deep within this body and this mind is a very good way to meet your fears and start to overcome your obstacles, changing yourself for the better along the way.
After the headstand incident with the cervical-spine-stand neighbor, I had a dream that was a very accurate visualization of this fear issue for me. The dream, convoluted and partially forgotten by me, had to do with me swinging from a rope (similar in nature to a yoga strap, actually) hung high in a tree in a field with few surrounding trees. Holding the rope lightly with my hands, I swung back and forth with glee gaining speed as one does when swinging on a swing-set. I was free and moving in the elements. There was no harness and yet I trusted myself to hold on to the only implement keeping me from the ground far beneath my body in motion. As with most dreams, I was outside of myself watching this scene, which would normally inspire terror and fear in me and yet, it was a pleasant dream. I was comfortable in my knowledge that I could hold on and be free in the same moment of motion. It is with this attitude and awareness that we should come to those practices that bring us up against our fear.
A little fear is a healthy thing, but too much can keep us from progress and change, which keeps us from life: life is change. As I continue to work on my practice and come up against my fears, it is always helpful to keep in mind the first two sutras in the Sadhana Pada, the Portion on Practice:
(1) Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books, and the surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice. (2) They help us minimize obstacles and attain Samadhi.[2]
These instructions for how to develop a yoga practice are fairly simple to keep in mind, if ever more challenging to work out in our day-to-day lives. If we keep with this idea of practice and change as a means to achieving a better us, it is very valuable to come back again and again to these instructions on practice. When meeting our fears, we have an opportunity to grow. We can accept any pain that is caused as a means to purification. We can read spiritual texts or go to a respected mentor for guidance. Finally, and most importantly, we can surrender unto that inner Self, the Om that is inside each of us and constitutes all of us. Meeting our fears head-on in this manner, gives us great opportunity for evolution towards Samadhi. So, tempt yourself and play outside of your comfort zone to test your fears and see which ones are really mental manifestations that clutter the mind to keep you from knowing your true Self.
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