Today we learned about pincha mayurasana. We all got a chance to try it out after morning practice. I’ve never attempted to pincha before so I was low-key nervous, but I figured some of the others were probably feeling the same. And I reminded myself that it’s okay if the first attempts aren’t perfect.
We all started by doing shoulder opening exercises with blocks, and they were really painful but it was worth it. Next we went into dolphin pose to further open the shoulders and to get used to the feeling of hopping up from there.
When we finally attempted to hop up to the wall, I had the same problem I did when we were attempting handstand. I didn’t dare hop high enough. I have an intense fear of inversions. Or was it something more? Maybe what I actually feared was falling over? Jessica came by to assist and I managed to touch the wall with my toes, but apparently I kept kicking away from the wall. She said something that I found quite funny at the time, but looking back maybe there was some truth in it. She said that maybe I had the fear of success.
As I took a break from the pincha practice I had a mini epiphany. I thought about what Jessica said. I asked myself what could possibly go wrong if I managed to do a pincha (nothing much, except maybe fall on my nose and break my neck) and decided to really give my 100% on my next attempts.
I gave a good hop and my legs went up, and I felt the weightlessness and let it be instead of panicking, and then I landed on the wall safely. It wasn’t perfect form, but I went up! From there I tried to correct myself – tuck in ribs and tailbone, engage the legs. I tried to make friends with the feeling of weightlessness. It started to feel quite exhilarating, kind of like how you feel when you fly in crow.
I’ve definitely still a lot to learn when facing fear, and I’m sure I’ll face it again when I learn another arm balance or inversion. But I know now that sometimes you really just shouldn’t overthink it and make a leap of faith (safely against a wall first of course).
Nia
RYT200 Aug’20 Weekend
