Whether your full body integration falls out of alignment in a headstand and you come crashing to the floor, a job you thought you were about to be promoted at lands you in a layoff, or you get dumped right after falling for someone and posting “in a relationship” on your social media status for all to see, nothing gets our attention like being confronted by the unexpected. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a surprising new space for which we weren’t prepared. We start wondering if we can embrace the change and fear that we might fall again.
Truth be told, we will fall again. We are guaranteed to…again and again. Challenges will come and go, whether we’re talking about our practice on our yoga mat or our lives. I, for one, have fallen many times…out of yoga poses and in my life. But, having things turned upside down, has always left me in a new and transformed space.
I’ve been working on my handstand a lot lately, both on and off the mat. In doing so, I’ve realized that inversions serve as a great space for us to embrace and move beyond fears, expectations, and impatience. Think about it, when you are upside down, your whole perspective is literally turned upside down. All of a sudden, upside down has to become right side up. We must surrender and let go. We learn through inversions that things aren’t always going to go as expected, but that they just might turn out for the better that way. If we color our inversions or our lives with expectation, we pin ourselves against impatience and frustration, which ultimately discourages us from trying again.
Simply put, as the saying goes, “Life if a journey, not a destination.” There will always be challenges and situations that we didn’t expect that come along, like a crashing wave. But, there is always one thing we can control, and that’s our accountability and integrity, of which we show up with, both on and off the mat.
Just as with each wobble and fall in an inversion, we have an opportunity to see each wobble and fall in our life as an opportunity to learn and grow. Hopefully, each time we fall, we gain a little more wisdom to bring to our next “inversion.” Because truly, we’re never more alive, than when things get turned upside down.
