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I had a shitty yoga practice yesterday. I was attempting a practice with a head stand and I’m leery of headstands. I have neck issues and I’ve never really been “successful” at headstand poses (whatever successful means in yoga).
I got to the headstand portion of the practice after doing two crow poses, put my head down on the mat and abruptly went out of the pose and out of the practice. I sat there watching the teacher do the pose with ease, still coaching as he was in the pose.
Something changed at that point and I just quit. I didn’t want to go on. I was angry and frustrated that I didn’t do the headstand pose and I questioned what the rest of the practice would be like as I held on to feelings about NOT doing the pose - one pose out of a whole series.
There are more than a few things here to unpack and look at through the lens of hindsight. As my wife suggested, I should’ve gone into child’s pose, taking a few deep breath‘s, waiting to jump back in after the headstand pose. But I held onto the anger and the frustration.
I also should’ve known better than to do a yoga series with a headstand as I knew I didn’t like headstands. But I guess I needed to be reminded. So today, I did a yoga series that I felt comfortable with and that I knew would make me feel good while doing it.
My practice today left me with that nice yoga sensation that I get from doing slow movements and long holds of the poses. So what’s the point of this Twitter rant? I guess what I see is that so much of what I’m going through these days is like yesterday‘s yoga practice.
Don’t keep trying to do things that only bring me pain, frustration and anger just because I think I should. I can still feel a sense of satisfaction doing things that are familiar yet challenging. Maybe I’ll do a headstand in the future and maybe I won’t.
