Teacher Says...

By Lishan -

Balance – a Lesson from the Mat,

Recently, after a class on handstands, a student asked “What’s the point of doing handstands?” Let alone handstands, perhaps a more fundamental question would be, what’s the point of doing yoga, when there are other ways to sweat, work out, get flexible, get strong…?

As we approach the year end, we start to get a little more reflective about all that’s transpired in the preceding 12 months. This has led me to again question where my life has been, and where it is headed. In the past 3 years since I’ve started practicing yoga, it has played a larger and larger role in my life. It is now more central than ever to me, to the extent that it is way more exciting to plan my yoga workshop and training schedule for next year than plan my (tiresome! haha) wedding! As the year draws to a close, it’s time to take stock of the why’s, how’s and what’s.

When I think about what practicing yoga is for, one word comes to mind – balance. Practicing asana has taught me so much about balance, and somehow this important life lesson has seeped into my daily life as well. Practicing asana has taught me that I must first be grounded and centred, in order to be able to extend and soar. I must look deep within myself and connect to my internal source of light and truth, in order to let it shine forth. Take for example, in handstands, one first needs to ground through the hands, and push down from the back and centre of the heart (literally radiating strength from the heart). And then engage through the entire body (up through legs and inner edges of feet) in order to extend organically. And, in the case of falling out of the pose (or not being able to get into it at all, yet), it doesn’t mean that one is a lesser yogi; it just means one should keep trying.

The overall “yogicness” of my general outlook was put to the test last week, when I got a flat tyre while driving. It was beyond flat – it had literally ripped up from wear. I ran through a gamut of emotions in that hour – first, I panicked a little – what should I do? It’s such a pain to change tyres in the hot sun all by myself. Then my second reaction was to actually smirk and feel kinda fortunate! I was only about 2km away from my house, it wasn’t raining, and I didn’t have anything on for the next 3 hours (I was just headed out to have lunch). It could have been a lot worse – just the day before I had driven to Changi airport, as well as to my day-job near the Woodlands checkpoint! Imagine if I had been stuck on the highway in the middle of nowhere, or if I had been on the way to work! Worse – if it had happened at high speed (and I’m someone who drives the car hard)… My inclination was then to feel so fortunate and so blessed, but I stopped myself there too – my tyre went flat because it was simply worn and overused. Week after week, I had put off changing my tyres (though the metal threads in the front tyres could already be seen), so this was a completely avoidable situation, had I been more responsible.

At the end of the day, I resolved to approach this situation with a more balanced view – rather than allow myself to get too panicky, or downright complacent, I strove to find a middle way. It’s a similar experience that I get in my practice – being freaked out by going upside down (as I had been just last year) was not constructive for me in getting into handstands in the first place. Similarly, being too comfortable doing it up against the wall all the time, without making the effort to properly engage and work on getting off the wall, and always just kicking up the same way into the handstand (as has been the case this year), has led me to hit a bit of a rut in my practice.

The recognition of our own shortcomings (in my case, my propensity to become complacent and too easily contented) is often the first step to constructive reflection, and positive change. In order to burnish the light that is already inherently within us, we need to resist overindulging self-love and self-doubt. I’m not intending to wait till January to effect changes – I’m going to work on my balance, getting my feet off the wall in handstand, starting right now…!