Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:11] Hello, and welcome to Deep in your yoga Practice. I'm Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. And today we're going to explore the question, why do yogis stand on their hands? So we'll be talking about what arm balances and inversions really teach us. If someone wandered into their very first yoga class and saw everyone balance, balancing on their hands or hanging upside down, they might reasonably wonder, what on earth is happening? Why does yoga include these postures? Are they agent? Are they necessary? Are they just for Instagram? Or do they make us better yogis? Today, I want to explore not only where these postures come from, but why they've become such an important part of modern practice, and perhaps more importantly, what they can teach us, whether we even master them or not. So our arm balance is ancient. This is fascinating because a lot of people assume they date back thousands of years.
[00:01:05] And I will say that most seated meditation postures are very old. Many standing poses are much newer than people realize think the medieval period is when hatha yoga came into practice, where some of the postures emerged. But many things like arm balances and handstands became much more prominent in the 20th century with an influence of gymnastics, wrestling, physical culture and this evolving tradition of yoga and yoga asana, or the physical practice of yoga. So we practice them. It doesn't make them less yogic in that they're not necessarily ancient techniques oftentimes, but they do remind us that yoga has always evolved. So instead of asking, how old is this posture? Maybe we can think about, what is this posture teaching? One of the things I love about arm balance balances and inversions are that they're difficult, actually.
[00:02:06] And as a human, I enjoy a challenge, and I think in general, humans do and can enjoy challenges. Things like rock climbing or martial arts or dance, maybe learning an instrument or a language. The challenge itself becomes a meaningful process. And arm balances are a challenge that offer immediate feedback. Maybe you're in it or you're not. You are falling or you're not. You're shaking or you're not. Those are going to become apparent right away. They're honest. You can't fake a crow pose. You can't muscle through a handstand forever. These arm balances or inversions instead ask for focus and coordination, breath, timing, body awareness, and I will say especially patience, because most of us don't happen to nail them on the first try.
[00:02:55] Does that happen every once in a while? Yes, sure, maybe. Especially if somebody's body is Primed and ready for that sort of thing. But most of the time, they take a lot of failing, a lot of falling.
[00:03:08] Maybe they take even practice falling or getting to love falling before we feel steady and comfortable in them. And all of this is part of a growth mindset. Failure isn't bad. It's not final either. It's just information that we use. And every wobble, every face plant, every cartwheel out of a handstand teaches us something. One thing that I want to note about balance, whether you're on your hands or on your feet, is that it begins from the ground.
[00:03:39] We have some kind of foundation, and maybe that's through our feet that are placed very specifically. Maybe it's through the foundation of our hands, which are also placed very specifically with hasta bandha, or spread fingers pressing into the fingertips, hips, integration around our shoulder joints. Balance also requires breath to be steady. We can hold our breath when we're faced with a challenge a lot of times, but balances ask us to breathe through them. We also need drishti, or a focal point somewhere to focus our gaze and attention onto that's not moving, so that we can harness our energy better. It also requires being able to recruit our core muscles and then use them properly. It requires weight shifting, sometimes shifting a lot more than what feels comfortable, shifting way far forward and having to trust our bodies to hold us up. It requires awareness. So being aware of where your body is in space or proprioception, it requires confidence as well. And think about it. Life works the same way. Big moments are built from a strong foundation that is typically built from tiny habits and from practice and from showing up and from refining the spectacular is often supported by the ordinary. So we might see a yogi on Instagram in a beautiful handstand, but what we might not see are all of the steps that it took to get there. All of the falling, all of the strength training, all of the drills, every cartwheel out, every stumble, even every injury we don't see, all that makes up the foundation to create that spectacular moment. Sometimes when I'm playing around at the gym or something, people will compare themselves to me or say something about the handstand. And it's always in fun. And I know I'm putting myself out there in that way. But what they haven't seen are the years and years and years and years and years it has taken me to be able to finally hold one without the support of a wall in my 40s, right? So strong foundation built from many, many, many tiny moments. Something Interesting about the challenge of arm balance and inversions as well is that fear comes to play.
[00:05:59] Arm balances and inversions expose our fear, our fear of falling, of looking silly, of failure, of injury, maybe of not being good enough. And it's important to know that yoga doesn't ask us to eliminate fear, but to relate different.
[00:06:16] Fear becomes a teacher rather than an enemy. Every inversion can be this conversation between fear and curiosity and trust. So it becomes this form of self study or swadhyaya, in that we're asked to confront ourselves, to get to know ourselves under challenging situations, to maybe notice how we react, and then perhaps to change our habits. In my opinion, going upside down, balancing our hands, doing these challenging things really changes us over time in a physical way. It challenges our systems of balance in our body, like the vestibular system and proprioception, our coordination, shoulder strength, core integration and balance. And mentally, they challenge our presence and focus, confidence, resilience, maybe our willingness to play. Our perception can literally change as we practice these. And this becomes this profound sense of play and wonder. You might notice that children naturally spend time upside down. My daughter loves to do headstands on the couch.
[00:07:25] They love to roll and do cartwheels and climb. And as adults, we often stop this. But yoga gives us permission to rediscover that play, that fun, that curiosity, that willingness, put ourselves out there and move our bodies in ways that might not always look pretty or sophisticated or cool, but instead challenge us and can also be fun. When we're working toward balancing on our hands or heads, the biggest lesson really isn't the balancing, but it's learning how to practice. Every attempt asks us, can I stay patient? Can I stay kind to myself? Can I breathe? Can I laugh? Can I try again? That's abiasa or practice. It's not perfection, but instead it's returning again and again and again with enthusiasm, maybe with a sense of humor, and with this willingness to try. So you might ask yourself, where in my life am I avoiding discomfort because I'm afraid to fail? Where could I maybe become a beginner again? What challenge is asking me not to succeed immediately, but simply to keep showing up? Hopefully, in life, we're faced with these things over and over because that's how we grow, right? Not by being in our comfort zones, but by continuously traveling outside of them, even if it doesn't look pretty. So can we be in that space, that space of gray, that space of trying, that space, perhaps even a failure, because we know that growth is on the other side, or it's in the process. Whether or not you ever hold crow pose or do a headstand, or if your feet ever leave the floor, these practices have something to teach you. Not because the posture matters necessarily, but because of the process. The process is what matters. Arm balances and inversions invite us to become more curious than fearful and more playful than perfectionistic and more interested in practice than performance.
[00:09:25] And that is where we find yoga. So if you were in Kansas City and this conversation sparked your curiosity, next weekend I'm teaching our quarterly ABIASA Posture Clinic, where we'll spend two hours exploring balancing postures, arm balances and inversions from exactly this perspective. It's not about achieving a picture perfect handstand, but we'll focus on the foundations how to build strength and stability and confidence and body awareness through thoughtful progressions that meet you where you are. Whether you're working on tree pose or handstand, the principles are the same and I'd love to explore them with you in person. So this is Sunday, August 16th from 12:30 to 2:30. It's $30 a person and True Love Yoga members save $5 with the code workshop. And for our yoga teacher trainees, this is completely free. I hope you can join and we can play together. And I want to add that I'm so happy you're here. Thank you for anything you're doing to get out of your comfort zone and to grow.
[00:10:24] That's how we evolve as people and that is one way we practice yoga. So thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:10:31] Have a beautiful week. Try something new. Don't be afraid to fall. Om Shanti Om. Peace.
