Inevitably there is always a time in life where everything is flipped upside down. Routines, situations, people, are no longer operating at the steady comfortable pace in which I have grown accustomed. In yoga, inversions are an important and powerful part of the practice. Inversions serve to reverse your body’s flow of your energy, galvanizing muscles, bones, connective tissue and organs to operate differently. Inversions also reveal a perspective to view the world anew.
When my world turns upside down the process gradual. It feels as I am in a fun house approaching the tumbler, the rotating hallway. I imagine getting through this hallway on my feet and quickly as possible. But every time, I end up on my ass, fighting to gain purchase along the moving walls, trying to find my feet.
The journey through the re-purposed cement mixer is not as fun as it looks. I can see the difficulty ahead and automatically try to adapt to the situation at hand. Through my eyes, the world shifts and I calculate ways to avoid getting toppled. In my heart and mind, my thoughts become fearful and desperate. In my body, I isolate with the belief that I have no one but myself to rely upon. My only recourse is to watch the approaching chaos.
Knowledge of impending the chaos or change means nothing.
I prepare as best as I can for an inversion. I force myself to talk to my friends, create support systems and strategies that hopefully, creates opportunities, handholds and plateaus to provide rest or a safe place to land when I fall. Nothing what-so-ever can truly prepare me for the disorientation and emotions connected to my life being turned upside-down.
The truth emerges that I have no choice but to surrender, watch and wait because I am powerless over the inversion. Until it is my time to act, I cultivate trust in the lessons my past experiences with inversions have taught me. There were moments where I found myself on my back, feet in the air, blood rushing to my head. In these moments I was filled with fear that I would never regain my footing or know how to live when I regain equilibrium.
My former lives have promised me two things. First, nothing last forever and second, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I learned that my journey would eventually reach a conclusion; and in spite of the fear and uncertainty I feel in the moment, I will feel just as, if not more, secure and safe in the next.
Right side up, the world’s motions become smooth and steady. My surroundings may not have changed but my my insides have and instinctively strive for balance within the new paradigm. I am changed.
From this point on my job is to do the best I can with what I have been presented. Trusting that when the time for inversion comes again, I meet it with integrity and grace.
You have the tools you need to weather the storm, good friend. Plus those friends are very important to help navigate a safe landing.
Hang in there, Mel. Upside-down or right-side up, you've got this.