Let’s be honest - unless you have some background in inversion (yes, gymnastics when you were a teenager counts!), handstands can be… daunting.
Still, we’re attracted to the very idea of facing that fear.
Trusting our bodies, beyond what we feel capable of.
Switching off every parasite thought, nudging our way into a state of forced mindfulness (try thinking about what you’re having for dinner tonight while balancing).
If you have decided that this year was going to rhyme with upsidedowness - well done, you took the first step.
You’re one of us.
The second step is to understand the tug-of-war at play in your body when dealing with something you want to do but don’t feel like doing because, well, it scares the shit out of you.
For that, I’ll borrow the image of the elephant, and its human rider (cf. Jonathan Haidt).
The elephant is your subconscious, roughly speaking.
Where your fear stems from. It’s the “I don’t feel like doing this” part.
Your conscious self is the rider, the human piloting / trying to control / thinking they are in control of the elephant. It’s the “but I really wanna do it” part.
While the human reins the elephant into the direction they chose… no one believe that they would stand a chance against the pachyderm in a tug-of-war.
The same applies in training a skill that triggers deep defensive mechanisms in us. Like handstands.
You want to nudge the elephant towards your goal.
But sometimes it WILL simply refuse to move.
Lack of progress, ie not balancing long enough yet, not reaching the wall yet, not freestanding yet or lacking consistency… all this usually results from the human in your head forgetting the beast they’re seating on.
In our classes, we therefore teach you:
- to listen to your inner elephant - and yes, it will behave like a tantrum-prone child.
- to soothe it with the adequate forms of peanut butter. That will take you much, much further than tug-of-war.
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