that home practice post I mentioned

The thing I like best about home practice is the focus that’s possible on every pose. Much of the time in class, parts of my mind are wondering when we’re going to release the pose, how I look to the teacher and the rest of the class, what the teacher is going to have us do next, what time it is, and all the other things involved in the fact that you’re in a class with other people instead of at home on your own. I have to expend energy on listening for the teacher’s instruction, on making sure my underwear isn’t showing, etc. At home, none of this matters, and I’m able to focus on the pose entirely. I can release it when I want to, instead of listening for the cue. I often feel during home practice that I’m getting the point, somehow, of each pose.

The home practice I had on Wednesday was almost the epitome of this focus, because my eyes were closed almost the entire time. I wanted to see how much I could do, how much correct alignment I could accomplish, without checking visually. The answer turned out to be a lot. I relied on how my body felt instead of how it usually looked, and without the comparison the poses felt more natural. My body’s own talents for alignment stepped forward, and the muscle memory I’ve built over the last almost-year was what guided me.

I found that there were a few poses where, unless I kept my eyes open, the balance escaped me and I was falling over. But generally without the visual stimulus I was able to bring even more focus to the practice.

Something else I like about home practice – and it may be self-serving instead of actually being a positive thing – is that I feel so much more accomplished. I’m amazed at the length in my hamstrings, at the flexibility in my spine. The things I can do in yoga are starting to be less advanced-beginner and more intermediate, and I’m quite proud of myself for it. In class I almost always feel that I’m jogging a little to catch up with the teacher and her expectations, instead of comparing myself to myself, how I was last week at home and how much ground I’ve gained in the last few months. Not so at home; my perspective is a bit more complimentary.

Even better, I think I might be on the way to handstand without misery. Handstand (which I talk about towards the end of this post, or just read on here) has never yet been a pose that I enjoy. Trying to do the initial build-up poses to it makes me unhappy, and flipping up into the pose with assistance from teachers is even worse. My shoulders just yell and scream at me until I get down. It’s not pain, exactly, just extreme discomfort.

A lot of people on yoga sites talk about how vulnerable handstand makes them feel, how much the fear of falling affects them, how disquieting they find inversions. I don’t experience much of this; I like inversions, I don’t feel at all vulnerable in them (just challenged), and falling does hurt, but not very much, so I know it’s not something to fear that badly. My problem is some other kind of block, possibly an emotion or an old muscle memory that’s tied up in my shoulders. It’s a mystery.

Last Saturday, I went to a class taught by a gal who’s perfectly nice, but I consider her the epitome of the Yoga Flake. She taught fairly well, and one of the poses she decided to put in was handstand. She spent a good amount of class time on it, instructing us in preparatory poses and then saying that we should try flipping up facing the room instead.* I tried it a few times, expecting nothing but that awful discomfort, but after a few hops, the discomfort was starting to fade, and the exertion was not so awful. “Huh,” I thought. “Can it really be true that all I need is practice in this stupid pose?”

*Like so: you stand more or less like a runner about to race, with one knee bent under your torso and your hands on the floor in front of you. Lift the extended leg as high as you can and try to hop with the foot that’s under your body, shifting your weight to your hands, and then quickly try to lift that foot to meet the other leg such that you’re handstanding. It takes a whooole lot of faith that the wall (or your abdominal muscle control) will be there to catch you, and some substantial coordination, but it’s definitely possible.

So, on Wednesday, I tried the preparatory poses against the wall. The discomfort was so low it barely registered; I felt the strain of holding my body upside down in all the right muscles, but my shoulders weren’t screaming at me to GET DOWN ALREADY like they always do. I was at the end of my practice and not prepared to try to flip up and hold it against the wall, but I felt pretty sure that I could have if I wanted to. I may try it more seriously this weekend with BF spotting me.

Breaking through on handstand will be one of those moments for me – one of those times where I marvel to myself that I was positive I’d never get the hang of this. The openness I feel in pigeon pose is sort of the same way, along with the ease and effort I feel in standing split (but that deserves a post of its own). Like, no way I’ll ever get this down, but, magically, now I have. But as I’ve said, I never truly believed that anything was possible until I started doing yoga…and now I definitely do believe it. So it’s not so much of a surprise anymore that I’m able to learn these things. Eventually.

It just takes some focus.