A few weeks ago, Will and Aaron took us on a team training excursion: aerial yoga in Campbell. I envisioned Cirque du Soleil type trapeze stuff, I was all about it. The second we arrived in the studio, Stasha and I just started playing… getting a running start, we’d swing in the hammocks, flip ourselves upside down, and take boat pose just inches off the ground. It was SUPER fun.

Once class started, we all felt pretty awesome. Like, even though we’ve never done this before, we can totally do aerial. We’re yogis. We can pretty much do anything. When the instructor complimented our bulldog-style breathing (“I love a class that can breathe!”) we felt pretty confident. We used the hammock like a strap to open our shoulders, which felt amazing. We did chaturangas with our feet in the hammocks, which made them infinitely harder. I, being the accidental-yoga-slacker that I am (I always forget to engage SOMETHING that should be engaged, even when I focus), felt my core fire up way more than normal. Perhaps this is what it should always feel like? Hmmm. What a thought.

After warming up, it became clear that aerial yoga is not just fun, it’s HARD. We started doing the upside down stuff. This is where it got a little difficult for me. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE going upside down, but I hardly ever do it for more than a minute at a time. In aerial, we spent a lot of time upside down, and it was significantly more than I was used to. I’d have to come up and let the blood drain back into my body, I’d have to shimmy around and get the hammock to sit more comfortably on my hips, I’d have to raise my hands above my head to get them to stop feeling so puffy. I turned red as a tomato, and sometimes forgot to breathe, and wondered if I was the only one in the room who felt like my head was possibly going to explode.

Then I saw Stasha totally rocking her upside-down-dancer’s pose. It was beautiful, she was hanging upside down, her face calm, both feet gripping her foot behind her, letting the motions of the hammock twirl her gently in the sunlight. It was just stunning.

“Wow,” I said, “That looks awesome. How can you even do that?”

“You can do it too,” she said, “Your foot is right there, just grab it.”

I flailed my fingers around a little, felt something warm and chubby, and felt a tingling sensation somewhere just above my head.

“Holy shit,” I said, “There’s my foot!”

And right then, I felt like I “got” it.

Maybe I had to give up my dream of Cirque du Soleil (s’ok, Loran’s going to go represent us all) but I did learn something from my afternoon upside down. Literally, it came in the form of my foot: I can never quite reach my foot in eka pada rajakapotasana, but for some reason, I could when I was inverted. More importantly, it was fun to play around, and to step outside my comfort zone, push the boundaries of the familiar. It gave me a sense of heightened awareness, a freedom to fool around, and permission to say Umm, that feels weird.

So. Would I trade my vinyasa flow for aerial? Probably not. Would I do it again? Definitely. Was it awesome to bond with the very people who make Yoga Belly the amazing, quirky studio that it is? Umm, yeah, because anytime your ass is spinning around upside down offering all your neighbors a panoramic view, it, well, builds some trust. Did I learn that defamiliarizing something you love can open up possibilities that you didn’t know existed? Absolutely.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why it’s important to, on occasion, step outside of your comfort zone. Even if it’s just with a baby toe. Like, a baby toe, in your hand, right above your head, which is upside down.

Let’s just all pretend that made sense.

Oh, and savasana in a giant hammock-cocoon thing? Best. Thing. Ever.

I was really struck by Matt’s post on Chasing Success, especially the part about how quickly you sometimes “progress” in the beginning of your yoga practice. For me, that post hit very close to home, and I wanted to share my thoughts.

Before I started practicing regularly, I couldn’t even touch my toes. Touch my toes, kids. I was TWENTY-SIX YEARS OLD. And my toes were out of reach. Also, I would get ridiculously sore after every class. Like, it-hurts-too-much-to-lift-my-arm-and-brush-my-teeth-sore. Honestly, when I first started, I didn’t even know hips could stretch, or where my hamstrings were. I would sashay down the grocery store aisles, not sure why my hips felt like jello, thinking, why is my butt so sore? I knew 4 muscle groups: arms, legs, butt, and abs. It was not a pretty picture.

After a few weeks of yoga, that started to change. It didn’t take long at all, and before the month was over, I was getting up into headstand. A few classes later, I did a rotating headstand. I busted out astavakrasana after two months. I felt like I was born for this, and should probably see about getting yoga into the Olympics and training for my new career as an Olympic yogini. Because see, that’s how I still thought of yoga: that’s how competitive I was.

Thankfully, I got a little reality check. I started to learn what yoga was really about (at least for me… some people still want to see it in the Olympics, but that’s not my bag anymore), and I started to respect it for what it was. I also began to see my journey through yoga less as “progress” than I did as a way of building my relationship with my body, my balance and focus, and my practice. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that while, yes, my body did change once I started practicing–it got stronger and slightly more flexible– what really changed was how well I got to know my own body. I got to know my own strength, and how to balance, and how to stack and align my joints to make the poses “click” rather than muscling my way into them. I learned how to push through what I thought was my end range. I learned how to actually stretch. I learned to trust myself, and that even if I did face plant in an arm balance, my face was only a few inches from the floor, and falling didn’t hurt. I learned that even if I did try taking handstand off the wall and forgot to engage my core like mad and my feet went sailing over my head, I could catch myself, or at least cartwheel down. I could fall and not flail terrifyingly out of control.

Who am I kidding, I’m still learning. Donkey kicks still scare the crap out of me. But I’ve taken the word “progress” down a notch, and am thinking of it more like making acquaintance with all my muscle groups. I still get stronger, I still get more flexible, but I’ve also learned not to flip out at myself for being too tired to get into parsva bakasana. I am learning to ignore the urge to “win,” to “progress,” to “conquer” the splits or tittibhasana.

I am, ironic though it is, learning to play.

Remember those picture puzzles you saw as a kid? Where you look at two copies of the same picture, but you have to find the six differences? Okay, let’s do that again, with these bad boys:

Don’t cheat! Take a minute to really look, and see if you can find anything. Don’t cheat…

Okay, what did you see? Because before my private lesson with Edna, I just saw my feet: flat on the ground in the first picture, and then up on my tippy toes for the second one. I would work on backbends and home, or look sideways in the mirror at the studio, and it all looked the same to me.

Kids, this is why you need a private lesson. Don’t get me wrong, instructors have adjusted my backbends before, and they’d say things like, “make a C with your spine,” “don’t put too much pressure on your low back,” etc, and I made a very concerted effort to listen and tune in to my body. And when they’d come over and pull up on my ribs, I’d definitely feel the difference, but not long enough for my muscles to remember the sensation. I’d flounder around afterwards, trying to recapture that elusive feeling, more or less to no avail. Then in Jeff’s class I realized I was doing things COMPLETELY wrong and I realized I needed some extra guidance. The spine is a very precious, delicate thing, I didn’t want to mess around with it.

So, I had another private lesson with the fabulous Edna Barr. In my opinion, the three best things about private lessons with her are:

1) Concentrated effort on your particular practice: your challenges, your whims, your body.

2) Professional explanation and unparalleled attention. If she explains something and I don’t get it, she’ll explain it again a different way, until it “clicks.”

3) The full body massage.

We spent an hour working together, of course starting with headstand and handstand, warming up with some vinyasas (which still give me grief, oy vey), and when I was warm enough to sweat we moved into backbends.

For the record, PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, you really need someone who knows what they’re doing to spot you, backbends feel amazing and wonderful but it’s also not hard to overdo it and injure yourself. Not worth it! Approach your favorite instructor, one who really “gets” you, and don’t go hurting yourself.

We started with bridge, then moved into full wheel, and I learned to rock back and forth to get more into my upper back. After every pose, Edna would work over my back with a delicious massage, it felt amazing. Finally, I got up into headstand (yes, headstand), and she helped guide me back into what might just have been the deepest backbend of my life. Y’all, my ELBOWS were on the ground, I could hardly breathe, and then when she told me to lift up my head, I was like, “What?” I don’t know about you, but when I’m in a pose like that, I hardly know my own name, I’m concentrating so hard just on breathing through the pose and not passing out that any verbal instruction is just totally wasted on me.

Edna knows this, and took pictures to help me. At first, she took a picture of my bad habits: the way I dumped into my lumbar spine, and kept my shoulders over my hands. After some coaching, she got me into a backbend that felt very different: there was significantly more action in my upper back, my shoulders crept towards my elbows, and the bend was so deep there was no way I could keep my feet flat on the floor (give me a few years!). The photos really helped me visualize the difference in my backbends, and it was so helpful to be able to scroll back and forth, rather than crane my neck to the side and try to see in a mirror, huffing and puffing and too “in the zone” to understand anything.

So! That’s the latest update in the Adventures of Tristen. I can’t believe we went from HEADSTAND to a backbend, I just can’t wrap my brain around that. But yes, it happened, and I think it happened a lot sooner than it would have because of the private, personalized guidance of a capable, thoughtful, and loving instructor.

Thank you so much to Edna, and all the amazing instructors at Yoga Belly! You ALL are fabulous!

Hello, all you Smokin’ Hot Yoga Moms!

Inspired by Morgan’s adorable 11-month-old yogi, we’re kicking off a new series here on the blog: Yoga Babies. Send in photos of your little yogis showing off their tricks, and we’ll share them with the rest of the YB family.

Here, we have Thoa’s daughter working on tanning the soles of her feet on vacation in Puerto Rico. So THAT’S what happens when your mom’s a yoga instructor!

To send in photos, please email the general mailbox at info@yogabellystudio.com.

Shoulderstand is not an inversion that I’ve always loved. It’s hard to breathe, you have to squeeze everything, and some women *cough* get nearly suffocated by their boobs. Nevertheless, there are many benefits to this position, and inversions in general: they’re good for the brain, and can help relieve stress and depression. In particular, shoulderstand can help stimulate the thyroid, and since my thyroid went kaput about ten years ago, I tried to learn to love this pose. I also just love being upside down, and this is a nice inversion for days when I’m too tired to go into handstand or headstand.

I’m not there yet, but Yoga Journal’s video helped. I love practicing at home… with carpet! Hope you enjoy…

Happy Hump Day!

Some of you have witnessed my battle first-hand. You’ve come to class a few minutes early, seen me inches from the wall, my legs flailing behind me, feet thudding like elephants, my face red and puffy and hair standing on end.

Apologies, ladies and gentlemen, for my glamourous attempt at handstand. And believe it or not, it used to be even uglier. And all that beautiful-ugly has given me a lot to think about, as I begin class too tired to chaturanga, too winded to get my ujayi on.

Because, if handstand is one thing to me, it is HARD.

And if it’s more than one thing, it’s beautiful and shimmery and nearly unattainable and unnatural and graceful and defiant and strong and oh my GOD I want it so badly!

So. For the last several months, I’ve been coming early to class to take advantage of the wall. I’ve broken picture frames at home and slammed onto my back and shaken the entire downstairs with my donkey kicks. I started out afraid of hitting the wall, and just barely able to scissor my legs up to hip level. I tried donkey kicks and felt so ridiculous that I learned humility real quick. I’d lean forward onto my hands, bounce my right leg just above my hips, lift my left foot for a fraction of a second, and come back to earth. Again and again and again.

It took me almost five months before I could even kick up onto the wall. But when I did, when I felt myself suspended over my hands, flipping the world upside down, and –finally!–tapping my toes against the wall, I felt like I was flying. I literally gasped as I cocked one leg at a right angle, rocking myself back and forth against the wall. I felt light, yet solid, and strong.

… for about eight seconds. Then I piked back down and gasped for air, exhausted.

Repeat about a thousand times over the course of the next two months. When I first started kicking up, I only got into handstand once in about 10 kicks. Then it went to once every 8 kicks. Now, I can kick up pretty easily, about once every 3 kicks.

Handstand is a pretty arbitrary goal that I’ve set for myself, I realize. I even realize the irony of goal-setting in yoga. And yet, I love the way the world looks from upside down, from my toes on the wall, my elbows straight below me. I love the ache in my arms that creeps in even before class starts. I love the quiet smack of my feet on the floor behind me, the dull thud of them on the wall above me, the thud that gets quieter and quieter the longer I practice. Handstand reminds me that yoga is never over, it’s never done, there is always something more. I’ve never worked so long on getting my body to do something. But I’ve spent almost a year working on this, and this is just the beginning. Once I kick up every time, I’ll work on floating up. Then I’ll work on coming off the wall. Then looking between my hands. There is no end, and we’re all going in the same direction. Or maybe we’re not. I really don’t know. But I’m pretty sure it’s not about beginning or advanced or whether you practice twice a month or twice a day. I think it’s about where you are, right now, and where you’re going, someday. And the way you choose to get there, whether it’s sweating quietly or grunting loudly or giggling your way through your vinyasas in class, at the beach, in your living room. And it’s about loving the view.

For me, I love the view from upside down. Even if I have to kick a thousand times to get it.

In the final installment of her three-part series, Krista Cahill takes us from down dog to handstand in 13 minutes flat. We covered alignment and neutral spine in part one, shoulder girdle placement in part two, and now we’re on to those elusive bandhas. Enjoy!

TerraFlow Video 10: Krista Cahill’s ABCs of Inversions Part II from YogaEarth on Vimeo.