Have you ever thought about it? Our fear of certain upside-down yoga poses is similar to our fear of, say, a parachute jump or a commonplace fear of shots.
I wonder, if you are afraid of anesthesia. I personally find the thought of general anesthesia very unpleasant. I guess it’s because anesthesia as well as all of the above-mentioned conditions have one thing in common: the loss of full control over the situation, over my life, and over what’s going to be happening to me while I am unaware of it.
That is why in my opinion upside-down poses in yoga should get generally more attention, especially if they are also devoted to balance. These poses are meant to help overcome fear of losing control over ourselves and the situation. This very fear doesn’t let us lift our legs up in the air when standing on our shoulders, hands or head. Moreover, once turned upside-down, we find ourselves on a position where our hearts are located above our minds. That is why reverse asana can often offer a response to my question on how ready I am to fully concede myself to my heart, letting go of mind control.
Just out of interest, we could try to compare our sensations when getting shots. When do we feel more scared or just more unpleasant: when someone does an injection to us or when we take the situation under control and do it ourselves? I recently compared my feelings and realized that it is much more pleasant for me to do shots to myself. As you see, it’s all about the good old subject of self-control…
Should we teach ourselves to get used to moments of loss of control? I think we should, because only a fool does not understand that always having full control over oneself and situation is fiction. As much as we strive for it, our control over our lives is still limited, just as possibilities of our bodies are.
By practicing yoga or sports we can learn to draw these limits apart and extend the borders of our capabilities. Advantage of yoga over sports is that it helps us digest the process of expanding the limits created by the body and mind into a more conscious and, therefore, more useful one not only for the body, but also for the mind.
By overcoming our own borders, we learn to recognize ourselves and our own bodies; we learn about our possibilities, our fears and understand how to get over them.
I guess one of the greatest human fears is the fear of losing control over situation. Isn’t it why our lives so often happen to turn into a quick march with clenched teeth?
Why do we so often forget that life is a joyful flight? Maybe it is because in order to enjoy this flight we need a relaxed mind?
I think I urgently need to learn parachuting.
Tbilisi, August 28, 2014