Yoda and Handstands

So, remember in EMPIRE when Yoda tells Luke, “You must unlearn what you have learned”? It’s in sacred texts too: you are what you believe, you make your own unhappiness, and so on and so forth. And on top of all of this I finished ZAMM yesterday and so I have a ton of Pre-Socratic thinkers in my head telling me how to live well and how a physical production done with peace of mind is actually a spiritual reality. It’s pretty far out in my head (well, really that was always true).

Today I did the whole practice and was done by about 8:40, which means I practiced for probably 2 hours and 20 minutes. TL’s handstand lesson today was “the press.” When he came over and told me that, instantly through my head went, “No fucking way dude, that’s impossible,” but with a head full of ZAMM now, that was immediately followed by, “wait, hold that, study it….impossible? why? for whom? let us investigate.”

The lever that you lift is the legs. Same as in headstand. If you bend the knees, you shorten the lever; if you spread the feet wide (WIDE), you shorten the lever. Shortening the lever takes less effort in the center line, and especially in handstand (much moreso than in headstand), you don’t really core your way up, you shoulder your way up. TL said vinyasa through (i.e., Navasana then Lolasana, jump sort of just behind your hands, come to Uttanasana) and then tiptoe, and then spread your feet wide and press up.

Experience: shoulders do come forward of hands. Engagement happens there. Hips ask to lift and don’t, really; can’t tell if it’s a faith problem or a physics problem.

Assist: Gentle lifting by the hipbones. As the legs are WIDER (and as wide as possible, like side splits wide), this actually ISN’T that hard. “Tuck it through,” he said–roll it back down, between, and into Navasana. I did, twice. Suprised the hell out of myself. The third time, I swung down ballistic, couldn’t hold it. That was enough.

Nothing particularly noteworthy in Intermediate; I had bigger backbends than I expected and got a Kapo to little-toe-grab (which is where TL likes my hands to be; sort of firmly grabbing the base of my two outer toes on each foot) and then a great Supta Vajrasana assist, and I held the toes through the whole some-teen breaths of it, down for five breaths twice, with some singles in the middle. Score! That’s cool because it means my injured right shoulder is REALLY healing now, returning to range of motion pre-injury.

During the handstand press lesson, TL gave me his central philosophical thing (so he said):

“I tell people, when they come in here, to just forget EVERYTHING they’ve been told, just let it ALL go. If you’re not seeing the groovy shit all around you, you’re just caught up in the concept, and it’s move the right hip back and press into the heel and all of that, and that’s valuable, but you’re living in a concept, not in reality, you’re not feeling the pose.” Words closely to that effect (any miscommunication is my own).

Now, the adjustments that I’ve gotten in the room have all intensified and in many cases clarified how a pose works. Purvottanasana; standing pose feet; Vira 2 arms; Parivrtta Trikonasana; Marichyasana A; Marichyasana D; one great Supta K; one great Baddha K; Kapo; Supta V and a Bhekasana today that just blew my freakin’ mind.

So it’s not the case that TL just likes to sort of anti-sacralize the tradition, but he really is allergic to people doing rote practice. This is a very tricky tightrope to walk, for the ashtanga vinyasa method is a very rigid thing. Take this many breaths, look here, do poses in this order, and in a counted class, even “do this movement on this word.” Wow!

So how can one sort of “anti-instruct”, how can you get students to UNLEARN and yet keep practicing the same thing?

Now, true, I think the added “closed eyes tree pose” and the revolved hand to big toe additions are kind of fluffy, and sometimes TL does just throw a wrench into your practice to get you awake (and awake is really hard to handle if your trance state of five breaths-move-five-breaths-move isn’t fully awake itself), but the wrench is not his main method.

RF said, quoted elsewhere, that when meditating, one must have the awakeness of just having had a triple espresso, combined with the calm of deep sleep. That resonates here. I think maybe it’s not “unlearn what you have learned” (for one learns a sequence and continues to do it, although various people in the room are pulling half-moon pose and sometimes forearm stands and I don’t know WTF those are for; they’re not sequenced in any way I recognize; and even the one chick who does a beautiful and skilled Advanced A was later doing Karandavasana and Bakasana B and some of the harder headstands from 2nd, after her practice–wha?? Strength building for Vrischikasana??) but more like “be awake in your sequence.”

Why is that a big deal? It’s hard to say, if you don’t teach people or aren’t a VERY keen observer of your own practice. You can TELL when a student (or when you yourself) check out of a pose, when you do it on auto-pilot. This isn’t at all the same as easy pose versus hard pose. Sure, hard poses wake us up and demand high attentiveness. No, it’s different. I see students check out in warrior poses all the time. The bodies actually SAY “la la la, raise hands, knee bent, la la la”, they practically SHOUT it across the room at me and I go over there and increase lunges and TURN ON that psoas stretch. People check out on their ujjayi. Flexible people get tired in Primary and check out in Baddha K, in Upavistha. No! Wake up! Keep it alive! TL actually said to me, in a Janu, “Keep this foot alive.” Yeah, and that’s it. Keep it alive.

Utkatasana: we’ve had numerous discussions about this one. Apparently it’s a pose where I check out. That’s not what I thought I was doing, but TL’s case is that I take it too shallowly and need to crank it up for the warrior sequence; he asked me to think about it as a sumo wrestler placing each foot down, knee well bent, or Maori guys doing a haka. That’s Utkatasana! So I tried it on, rather than, as he put it “just making the shape that the tradition tells you is right,” and it does actually work; it changes the spirit of my Surya B’s.

I think that TL’s often hostile-seeming approach to tradition isn’t to the tradition ITSELF but to the tendency to sleep in it. The potential for sleep, for not “seeing all the groovy shit that’s around.”

Pirsig would put it this way: abandon Platonic “forms,” because it’s not the ideal you want, it’s the Good, and since we know that Plato nipped “The Good” from the Pre-Socratics, what we ACTUALLY want in practice is the QUALITY. If this is a practice that brings you to the present, that wakes you up to the moment, then it is in a way IMMORAL to check out while you’re doing it. That’s what bad mechanics do; they don’t CARE about their work, they aren’t UNIFIED with it, and they do it ROTE and then they screw up your motorcycle.

Sure, can you feel unified by doing what the authorities say? Make the shape, breathe, move; it works. I’ve done it. It does.

But not in this room; that sort of thing shouts and then it gets addressed. Keep it alive. How it FEELS over how it LOOKS. I keep telling students that. But as verbiage, it’s useless. “Feel it!” you say, and what do you EXPECT as an answer? No, you have to touch people, you have to say, “Feel THIS.”

It takes a hell of a lot of concentration to keep a set sequence alive, unless of course one is alive constantly, one is in a PRACTICE of being alive, which Pirsig would call a practice of living with Quality. I like that.

TL said, “do some handstands after backbends, before Paschimottanasana.” I did three successfully; one was up and quickly down feet-side, the second was up for a full five breaths and then began to fall over-head and I somehow painlessly rolled out of it, somersault style, and the third was up for maybe three breaths and began to go radically over-head, so I walked on my hands, pad, pad, then lost it totally to the right, and BANG!! down on ankle, hip, shoulder. That floor is wood and I took big steps, so I was full on the hard stuff. It was fucking LOUD; people inhaled in sympathy pain. But as is my habit from falling out of things, I popped up and acted cool and ok in an effort to CREATE cool and OK (which sounds silly, but really does work), and TL said, “I’m ok with that, if you are” I nodded and took my forward bend.

I don’t know that I’ll do those things wall-free tomorrow, but I think we’re going to do some ticking lessons before I leave here (why else the request to do post-backbend handstands?) so maybe I’ll try falling into a backbend rather than on my bones tomorrow. TL and Larry have this in common: they like courage, even if it fails. What Pirsig would call gumption. The ability and willingness to doubt our “can’ts” and “impossibles.” I’ve always had that. That’s why I started climbing 5.10 again six weeks after my ACL repair.