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.

You might think of yoga as gentle and restorative (at least, until you know better, and realize that yoga can kick your ass) but that line of thinking can be dangerous. ANY activity comes with inherent risks, and yoga is no exception.

You can get hurt. Really hurt. A recent New York Times article outlines just some of the havoc that yoga can wreak on your body.

Luckily, I can’t speak from too much experience here. I have yet to injure myself in yoga (knock on wood). I think I have, however, come close. One time, I was so deep in a twist that I felt this weird, sudden shift in my ribs– it didn’t hurt, but it startled me, and I came out of the pose right away and everything was fine. Another time, as I was working on a bind, I felt these weird shocks all of a sudden, like mini bursts of electricity shooting through me. I assumed I somehow touched on a nerve, and again, it didn’t hurt, but I came out of the pose thinking, “Whoa.” I probably shouldn’t have done that. I probably take my backbends too far sometimes, and wake up the next morning more tender than I should be.

It’s a fine line to walk: on the one hand, you want to push yourself, and you’re doing all this funky stuff with your body that you’ve never done before, everything’s so unfamiliar! How can you tell when you cross the line from challenging and new to dangerous and over the edge?

For now, my answer is: know thyself. I know I have a tendency to push it, so I need to work on playing it safe. Not wussing out by any means, but respecting and protecting my body. It’s just not worth an injury that will leave me out of commission for weeks and weeks!

So now, readers out there, what do you think? Have you ever injured yourself in your practice? Have you come close? How can you tell when you’re flirting with danger?

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.

Spoiler alert: I originally tried to keep the instructor’s identity secret, so that I wouldn’t bias anyone for or against said instructor and you’d all be free to connect privately with the instructor who speaks to you, knows your practice, etc. But, then I realized that, to write about my experience honestly, I had to describe the instructor’s approach fully, and that would give it all away. The second I wrote “diamond in the sky” you’d all get it, so whatever: it’s Edna.

So yeah. After “warming up” (I won’t lie, I was way beyond warm, and already feeling the burn), we moved into sun salutations. All I did was stand up straight at the top of my mat, and Edna simply observed me: in her professional, caring, non-judgmental way.

“Hmm,” she remarked, “Your ankles are different.”

I looked down at my feet. They looked pretty similar to me, but what do I know. Then she gently pointed to the humped bones of my ankles, one of which seemed to “stick out” a little more than the other. Weird. Here I’ve had these ankles for 27 years and I’ve never noticed, but she had picked up on it after only a few minutes.

“Oh well,” she said, “Everyone’s a little different, and it shouldn’t stop you.”

Whew!

We started to flow through some sun salutations, and my down-dog got worked over like nobody’s business. Apparently, I took it a little too literally when someone described it to me as a “resting pose.” I just kinda stuck my butt up in the air, pressed through my heels until I could feel my calves sing a little, and rolled my shoulders back. I did make an effort to spread my fingers and ground through my hands, and I was pretty proud of myself for remembering to take my yoga so seriously.

Right.

The first thing Edna did was to place her hands firmly in the center of my upper back, and apply smooth pressure to straighten out my spine. She turned my mat perpendicular to the mirror, and said, “Watch this. Don’t look up until I tell you.” After straightening my spine, she stood up and rotated my pelvis out and up, so the tops of my hipbones were angled toward my shoulders, rather than straight down at the floor. Then, she got behind me, wrapped her hands around my thighs, and pulled back. I felt my heels inch incrementally closer to the ground, I felt the balls of my feet ground more firmly below me, I felt my spine lengthen and tailbone pointing up.

“Now look,” she said. I turned my head to the mirror and saw myself, sweating and red, but in the shape of a nearly perfect upside-down V. Damn, I’ve never looked so good!

She let go of my legs and I shifted subtly forward, not quite the perfect V I had been a moment ago.

“Uh oh,” Edna said, “what happened?” I shrugged and she came back around, tapped the tops of my quads. “Engage here,” she said.

I tried. Nothing happened.

She tapped my thighs again and said, “Right here. Make this hard.”

I tried, but remained squishy. Edna furrowed her brows and told me to come out of the pose and stand up. I did, and she knocked lightly on my quads until, finally, they tightened, then she said, “There! That’s it! I knew you were stronger than that,” and told me to get back down into my DD and keep those thighs as flexed as they had been when I was standing up.

And what do you know, I found my hamstrings.

Somehow, I had spent months listening to this same instructor tell me to do all these things: lift my chest, ground through my hands and feet, and engage my inner thighs, but only now, after being painstakingly molded and tweaked into position, did I get it. So this is down dog. Well, hello there.

A few weeks ago, I had my first private yoga lesson.

I wanted to make sure I had all my basics covered, so that I could move into more challenging poses with ta solid foundation. I didn’t want to learn any bad habits, and I felt like I was ready for the “next step” in yoga.

So, I show up to the studio, and to warm up, I have to get into headstand and touch my feet to the floor and back up again, five times. I’m a little nervous about the piking part, but my headstand has felt strong for months, so I figure I’ll give it a try.

Cue humble pie.

First off, I hadn’t been doing headstand properly. I didn’t realize there was a “proper” way, I thought as long as your feet went over your head and you didn’t topple over onto anyone, you were golden. I was wrong. My elbows were too far apart, my head was too close to my hands, it was a disaster.

Here’s where a private lesson starts looking different from a group class: EVERY little detail gets serious attention. In a group of 15 students, no instructor has the time to kneel down by you, skooch your elbows into exactly the right position, and stand behind you as you lift your feet up. In a private lesson, everything gets adjusted precisely, and when I picked up my shaking legs, the instructor was right behind me, guiding my hips, pointing out things I didn’t even notice (like, apparently I was leaning more on one elbow than the other). Nothing was overlooked. I got massaged every time I took a break. I started to realize just how much I was in for, and I was loving it.

Coming Up: Sun Salutations (And you thought they were easy!)

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.

Dearest yogis,

As many of you already know, our lovely Edna Barr is off to Bali until July. We are in capable yoga-hands until then, but we’ll still miss her terribly.

Edna is the instructor who first introduced me to yoga. I mean, real yoga. Before that, I had done a few classes at 24 Hour, spent most of the time breathing and maaaaaaybe doing a sun salutation or two, but nothing that actually got me to sweat. Or focus. Or take yoga seriously.

Then I came to Edna’s class. And in less than ten minutes, she had me sweating and shaking so hard in my low plank that I spent half the class in child’s pose. During the last part of class, while we were doing backbends, I was flailing around, fingers grazing my calves, trying to get into camel pose. She came over, grabbed my hips, and said, “You’ve got plenty of space. Fire it up, Mama.”

And then my hands were on my feet. Solidly, soundly, somehow, on my feet.

That’s just the first in what turned out to be a long line of moments where Edna got me to do things I didn’t realize I could do. All the teachers at Yoga Belly have done this: realized things about their students that we didn’t know ourselves. But Edna was my first. As Will would say, after that, I was no longer a “yoga virgin.”

It’s such a strange feeling!

So, what about you? What’s your favorite Edna-moment? Or a time where an instructor got you to do things you didn’t think you could do?