the hubris of bending over backwards

the hubris of bending over backwards

Many years ago (many? errr it was long enough!), I accompanied some of the people I knew to a photo shoot for a book on yoga.

They needed some photos for back bends and asked me if I could do the modelling. I said sure! I thought I had a flexible back, (cue narrator voice, “she did not have that flexible a back“) no worries, what do you need. I thought I was helping. Helping who?

Can you guess how this ends?

I got into wheel pose, fresh, not very warmed up as practice was already a few hours ago. All fine, do this do that, ok we got the pictures. Man did I feel twingey that night! And I never had back problems so it was pretty alarming.

Pride comes before a fall but also before a backbend before you are properly warmed up. A little wordy but it gets the message across.

To this day, I don’t even know if the book ended up getting published and if the photos were really used.

I’ve learned since that jumping to attention and trying to people please is not the wisest move. You can pause and work up to it.

Something for me to laugh about.

yogawheel yoga stretching flexibility

Have you had this type of lesson?

Weekend Things – Yoga, Qigong, Meditation

Weekend Things – Yoga, Qigong, Meditation

I burst out laughing yesterday afternoon when I saw my phone alert. I have a meditation app as do many of us these days (an app for everything, no?!) and on the dot at 3pm it pinged me.

There are two mistakes along the way to mastery: Not starting and not going all the way.

Buddha

I wasn’t laughing at the quote, more that I had just seen another video from Shaolin Temple about discipleship, quite a funny video in which the proposed disciple was constantly evading his master (Sifu) and his upcoming haircut. I had been thinking about how when it is time to practice, just practice don’t think about excuses and I had confirmed with myself that 3pm was afternoon practice time. That was when my phone pinged me and I saw the quote which is the same one used by Sifu too. It just all seemed very … oh never mind, stop thinking just go practice.

(Do you know what I mean though?)

Here is something I am working on in my yoga practice. Trying to improve my flexibility, if you intend to try, please warm up first with sun salutations or something similar. The aim in this is to keep the upper body in the middle, and to creep the hand holding the strap down the strap to the ankle. Honestly I find manouvering my hand down in this fashion quite confusing because up is down and left is right and where am I who am I hahaha. But it’s a pretty groovy experience all the same, I kind of… enjoyed the strangeness? Give it a try!

What are you doing this weekend? Something? Nothing? Everything? Haha, here are some suggestions, let me know what you enjoyed!