Backbends
A reflection on my journey to master Wheel Pose (Chakrasana)
This post was originally published in December 2020.
Backbends are one of my favourite things to practice at the moment. Wheel (chakrasana) was one of those poses that took me so long to get comfortable in. #stillpracticing 😅 I’m not talking days or weeks. I’m talking years. For so so long I couldn’t push myself up no matter how hard I tried. ⠀
One month, I got particularly tough on myself. I was so convinced that I needed to master this one pose and I needed to master it NOW like preferably yesterday. This is literally the opposite of everything yoga teaches, but I am only human. ⠀
So I kept trying… EVERY DAY. I practised with blocks (which really helped) but I just couldn’t get up without them. Instead of enjoying the process, I found myself getting so frustrated because I wasn’t seeing any progress. Eventually, I just stopped trying altogether. ⠀
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It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I decided to give it another go. And… I popped straight up. Progress is a really funny thing. It’s not a straight line graph like we imagine, it’s all ups and downs. ⠀
So what happened next? No, the world did not stop turning. The sky did not fall down. What really happened was that I had this brief moment upside down. Immediately thought “OMG I did it, I did it, I’m doing it, I’m doing it”. Then I lost all my focus and ended up crumbling into a heap on the ground 😂.
What would I do differently now? Take more rest. Don’t be so hard on myself. Definitely enjoy the journey more without being so focused on the results. ⠀
In the words of someone much wiser than me: ⠀
“Practice and all is coming.”
