Twist?
Posted in ashtanga, ashtanga yoga on 04/13/2011 06:11 pm by karenOkay, so I’m doing handstands and am dogged by the fear of going over backwards. Once I flipped pincha mayurasana, it was all downhill from there — no fear equals get the pose. I want to solve for handstand fear.
“What if I just go over?” I asked Muscle Man (meaning, what if I just went over into a backbend).
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“Don’t do it?”
“Don’t.”
Then he showed me how to go up, then start to fall backwards and twist until my hips come around and my feet land. Well, he showed me HIM doing it. My brain isn’t convinced, though, that what my eyes saw will translate into what my body does, when push comes to shove.
So I’m looking for stories about how people overcame fear of flipping over backwards from handstand. Does everyone twist/crappy cartwheel out of handstands?
04/13/2011 at 8:13 pm
um….
As an avid handstander (who never had fear– sorry, can’t help you there!), I am VERY against this insane advice about twisting the body to land on your feet!!! It sounds too circus-y or acrobatic, like tumbling. Also sounds like it’s setting you up for injury. Sorry, have to be honest. I’m sure your teacher has good intentions, but surely I’m not the only one to think this instruction is a bit off the usual path?
To go over into a back bend is not any scarier than flipping your pincha! I’m still laughing about your crazy pincha flipping. As long as your back is warmed up enough to land (which it would be by that point in your practice, right?) then you’ll be fine. Next come drop overs and they’re insanely fun. You’re going to love them. Get on the fast track and start going over into back bend from handstand! And then there’s tick tocking…
This may take secret home work.
04/14/2011 at 2:36 am
The twist seems like the perfect recipe for dislocating a shoulder. But what do I know, I can’t handstand to save my life!
04/14/2011 at 4:37 am
I used to flip in pincha all the time when first learning it. No big deal really (once your back is warm) just landing in some kind of urdva dhanurasana and then crawling back to yet another attempt of pincha – again and again for about a year.
It seems you had a different experience with learning pincha. Did you get injured or what happened?
04/14/2011 at 4:55 am
i concur. don’t twist. also because you will create a repetitive lopsided pattern in the body. so even if you don’t actually ‘injure’ yourself, the musculature will become out of whack (medical term, haha). learn to flip over. you will be fine
04/14/2011 at 5:02 am
Perhaps I’m explaining this badly… It’s not really a twist. Maybe the term “cartwheel” is better?
Here’s an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuTTxNpJx-4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Roselil, my expience with pincha was pretty standard, I think: use the wall, use the wall, try not to use the wall but be scared of falling over, finally fall over and find out it’s no big deal, fini.
04/14/2011 at 5:05 am
When I started working on handstands/drop-overs, my teacher would spot the handstands when I was with him so I could work on strength…but when I asked how to work on them when I was practicing on my own, he looked straight at me and said “you just need to go over [into a backbend]“. I was terrified and stalled for awhile until I was visiting a friend at a studio where they have carpet in one room. I finally sucked it up and went over into a backbend. The first couple weren’t especially graceful and I was grateful for the carpet… but they were fine really. Once I got the hang of going over, they were fun.
…I’m with Liz and V, twisting seems like it has potential to injure shoulders, back, neck?…but I’ve never tried it, so maybe I don’t quite understand the mechanics of coming down that way.
04/14/2011 at 10:33 am
I’ve umm “exited” handstand a number of ways:
1. falling overhead, quick put head down to floor, somersault. Suprisingly painless. Must tuck knees the second you feel the overtip begin or this won’t work.
2. falling overhead, don’t put head to floor, crash onto back. Ow, but you live. You learn not to repeat that.
3. falling overhead, walk forward on hands trying to balance, fail, crash out to side, BAM onto floor. Scare all members of Mysore room. Bruises on hip for three days. Not recommended.
4. Doing what you brought up here, basically twisting the hips about 90 degrees so the feet “fall” out to the side, not over your head. This is no more difficult (or risky, but just my opinion) than twisting your hips 90 degrees while you’re standing up. And you got it right, you sort of cartwheel. My one caveat is that you have to feel the handstand going over, when it’s VERTICAL. Try to cartwheel out of it when it’s already falling, and you can risk landing flat out on hip and leg or in a sort of “wild thing” 3 legged dog. Lots of variations.
5. Dropping over into backbend. I haven’t historically had the flexibility to do this without very nearly “decking” my head, and so it makes me nervous. But it does work, and of course, yes, it’s the intro to ticking, but my understanding is that when you learn to tick, you’re supposed to be able to hold a handstand for 10 breaths and then control (to various degrees) the dropover.
Onward!
04/14/2011 at 11:05 am
This is gymnastics.
Fear is rational. When this practice asks you to move in to something that creates fear, it’s because the big body of knowledge has generated lots of evidence that this particular fear is not worth hanging on to.
This is not such a situation. At all.
Learning to teach is like learning a series. There’s surrender stuff in addition to work. If there is experimentation, it’s subtle. This body of knowledge… it’s relational. I’d call it oral tradition, but it’s not that. It’s somatic tradition. That’s why we’re still doing this archaic, otherwise crazy, apprenticeship thing, you know?
I like the idea of teachers doing more surrender than they ask of students. Checks and balances.
04/14/2011 at 12:25 pm
Maybe you are bit like me with stiff shoulders and that’s why your teacher said it? My stiff schoulders make the flip difficult and kind of guaranty landing on my back instead of on my feet. Maybe you can try it out at home: put a matras on the floor, put down your hands just in front of it and land on the matras. Even landing flat will be oké there.
04/14/2011 at 1:54 pm
Nope. It’s creating a pattern in the body and the mind that won’t be useful later. Fine if not warmed up and playing around in the park. During practice, it’s both an evasion and a recipe for landing on your neighbour. I don’t think the proponents practice in crowded rooms!
For me I just had to get over the fear, which was a very long and interesting process.
04/15/2011 at 12:23 am
I guess I’m surprised that your teacher hasn’t spotted you enough in handstand to help you flip over, so that you feel comfortable with that. Where I go, CL seems to teach handstand with spotting for a little while, and then spot through a flip once or twice, before the student is left to work on it by themselves (this probably happens over a couple weeks). But I don’t teach, so I don’t know how this looks from the other side.
That said, I do sometimes exit the way your teacher suggests, and I sometimes tuck and roll, but I did gymnastics as a kid (Owl is right – it is gymnastics), so that feels comfortable to me. It is neither normal nor encouraged where I practice. Sometimes I prefer to roll out, because I don’t always have enough control to go over without straining a shoulder a little bit (serratus is weak). But you’ve heard all that from others.
To develop handstand control, CL has me jumping into a tuck (kind of an open tuck – knees are not fully to chest or it’s hard to engage uddiyana), and balancing there for multiple breaths. It seems virtually impossible to flip from this position.
All that said, you’re fine, you just need a spot a couple times to get you past the hurdle. IMO, it’s easier to flip from handstand than pincha, so you’ve already done the hard one.
04/15/2011 at 11:33 pm
So, you know how I said it was “virtually impossible” not to flip from a tucked position? Um, disregard that part.
04/16/2011 at 8:21 am
OMG, Wombat, that totally made me laugh! Kinda like Patrick’s litany of questionable dismounts. What was it like? I love tales of adventure. Tuck and roll?
Thanks, everyone, for the input. I particularly like your idea, Felouk, ’cause I do like props.
What’s happening in the room is that I am learning to balance. It’s just like pincha mayurasana (and all the poses): first you can’t and then eventually you can. I don’t think about it during practice, but afterwards I get questions in my mind, like “What if I fall all the way over?” I’m not tormented — just curious.
04/16/2011 at 8:24 am
Oh, and the larger point: it isn’t that my teacher came over and started teaching me how to cartwheel out of a pose. I asked about flipping over and he showed me a cartwheel. He doesn’t encourage me to practice them; he isn’t repeatedly teaching that. It was just a response to a question. What he’s teaching me is to go up in handstand while he spots, then he assists in the flip over. Then I practice part 1 on my own a bit.
04/17/2011 at 12:45 pm
Right on, Karen. See I’m thinking handstands more and more because
1. I’m sort of tutoring a Budokon guy on how to be a yoga teacher (and as part of that we workshop the crazy floating stuff that practice has in it) and
2. I might be headed to Seattle this summer, and you know whose room that means some time in.
04/17/2011 at 1:14 pm
Handstands on a high box! Actually, it’d probably be easier to flip over from that height — you’d land almost standing. Maybe I need to dig a hole in the back yard.
I’m just recalling handstands on the ramp. I was so aware of sliding down the ramp that I never thought to ask: What’s this for? Any thoughts, PK?
04/18/2011 at 7:43 pm
Haha, yes, the many handstand flashbacks. TL said to me that all of the gimmicks were simply to kick up the “f.o.” (freakout) factor, although we did do a “which way are you going to fall” thing at the ramp, and of course I mis-guessed and practically fell over my head.
I think it’s equal parts proprioception, fear confrontation, and redirecting concentration so that falling doesn’t become the thing you think about. I really like some creatively deceptive “redirection” when I’m either talking myself into a pose or even better, teaching someone else a pose. For example: you take the ‘fraidy headstander and tell him or her that it’s all about the shoulders, and you get them so concerned about what the shoulders do, that they go up and “forget” to freak out and fall over. Or you tell the Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana gang that it’s all about the big toe on the standing foot, and suddenly they forget about “how impossible to balance” it is and ta-da.
For what it’s worth, I made myself take the hands WELL away from the wall today, and I jumped into a handstand and stuck it; wall has become toe-touch crutch. Inversion advice #769: “if you have time to calmly ask yourself, hm, am I going to fall over in this? then you have the option not to.”
04/19/2011 at 5:01 am
TL did the whole walking in and out of my field of vision during UHP, then suggested I could relax the dristi (i.e, play with letting it move all around, instead of holding onto it for dear life). Kind of fun. I really enjoy his playfulness.
Yeah, there was a point in learning to come up from UD where a calm thought would notice I was not going to make it all the way up and that all I had to do was drop back down. Duh! Felt so simple to realize that. The key is to eschew the panic flail. Words to live by, right? Holds true in circumstances in *and* out of practice.