The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › General Hot Yoga Discussion › Motivation and Inspiration › Balance Challenge
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Balance Challenge
A year and a half ago, I challenged myself to see if I could go a month without falling out of a pose. That month lead to another, than to six months. I wondered if I could go a full year. I told my wife what I was up to and than during my next class I fell out of Standing Bow.
So I started over and last week I made it! Now, I know a lot of people are thinking this is not what yoga is about. So let me tell what I learned from the experience.
I’ve learned to focus and concentrate. I have always had great balance, however this took me a step further in my concentration. Since I’m so focus, I’ve become good at reading my body and adjusting to slight movements so they don’t become bigger movements. In Standing Bow, I can move my arm or curl my fingers as a way to get back in balance. My strength has improved greatly since I’ve stayed in the poses the whole time. Many days I wanted to fall out because I was low on energy. That had me wondering, how many people fall out not from lack of balance but from lack of strength.
Now, I didn’t go to every class telling myself I wasn’t going to fall. I told myself that I was going to focus and concentrate. The times I came closes to falling were when I was looking at someone else or when the ‘monkey mind’ was chattering. I once had a talk with the owner of the studio and she mentioned that the people who fidget the most seem to fall out of the poses the most.
Things that helped me stay focused were: I continued to look at myself between poses. Went into and out of the poses slowly. Being close to the front of the room helps. Had a routine when I took a drink or wiped sweat. When I read Gabrielle’s’ Meditation-101’ I saw I was doing most of her triggers.
During this time, I took 4-5 classes a week and decided to do a 30 classes in 30 days at the end.
Now for some people it would be a challenge to do one pose without falling. While others it might be one class or one week. Read Gabrielle’s ‘Meditation 101’, go into your next class and really concentrate on yourself and see if it helps your balance.
Wonder about yourself!
Dan
Hello Dan
I want to thank you so much for sharing your story and inspiring thought provoking discoveries.
I am really appreciating the way you have had the intention of creating a strong focused class rather than concerning yourself with balance or not falling out.
This is what I try to instill in my students: that there is a balance (ha, no pun intended) between strength/effort and surrender and we need to find that in very pose. If you substitute focus and concentration for the ‘M’ word 😉 (meditation) then you can only improve your practice.
In our standing poses, falling is learning. When you apply yourself, and push your edge and happen to fall (and not care!) you are in the process of learning how not to fall. This is where a lot of the breakthroughs can happen – if you have the right intention.
You are right when you say:
Many days I wanted to fall out because I was low on energy. That had me wondering, how many people fall out not from lack of balance but from lack of strength.
I would like to add another dimension. Frankly, not falling out in a pose CAN be easy: It could even be synonymous with not working hard enough. Or as you may have heard it said; ‘not pushing your edge’. It can be related to a fear of falling out, of failure, or looking silly or a number of other reasons.
It is excellent that you have a heightened awareness of what has become a distraction for you (ritualized or not). This awareness makes for a strong physical class. I have had feedback from a number of our readers who say that they don’t need Meditation 101 because they just want a good solid physical class.
The mental aspects, the taming of the ‘monkey’ mind, the ability to look at oneself in the mirror through intense sensations without distracting yourself, the wherewithal to do whatever it takes even though your mind is trying to sabotage your efforts to get to class, stay in class, stay in a pose or ward off distractions and just simply be and focus are what will drive you to creating a much stronger physical class for yourself.
Dan, I love the way you made your point. Unless you strongly object I would dearly love to refer to your post in my next email to all our readers!
Oh and thank you for the shameless and unsolicited plug :cheese: for my Meditation 101 article. Here is the link:
HotYogaDoctor Meditation 101 free pdf.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Gabrielle,
I have no objections for you to use this post!
I need to take a photo of the lockers I made for the studio I go to.
On each door I have a pose cut out instead of a number. I used the photos from your other site as templates.Dan
Hey Dan,
You and Gabrielle inspired me to try something in yoga this morning which resulted in me falling out twice in Dandayamana Janusirasana – I was focusing on *really* engaging my abdomen. It resulted in me losing balance backwards twice until I could get breathing under control and lean forwards into my big toe.
It’s given me a new edge to work towards!
Thanks you guys.
😀
Robert
PS – glad our pose photos are still finding use all over the world! We have hundreds of super-detailed, very professional new ones done, but a secret project has to be launched before we’ll reveal them. Only a couple of months to go now …
Thanks Robert,
I like your idea of focusing on engaging your abdomen. There’s so many things to focus on in this practice.
While focusing on my balance, sometimes I noticed my quadricep wasn’t always engaged. Had to focus to make sure I “pull up my kneecap with my quadriceps muscles”. This might be a new focus.By the way, I now give myself permission to fall.
Dan
Gabrielle,
Your response to my balance challenge got me thinking.
Last night, I went out to dinner with friends and we had a conversation about focusing in yoga. During a pose, I’m concentrating on the pose, tightening muscles and breathing and I’m aware of everyone around me. Someone commented that I wasn’t focused if I was aware of others. A friend said when she goes to class she has no idea who was in class.That got me thinking. When I’m a passenger in a car and we get to our destination. I can tell you the conversation, the music playing, landmarks along the way and I can give directions back to our starting point. My friend said she was only aware of the conversation and had no idea what the landmarks were or how to get back. Seems we have completely different ways of focusing.
We went a little further with the conversation and realized when she was young her survival mechanism was to go inside herself. Mine was to be aware of everything around me. It was one of those “AH-HA” moments for both of us.
This morning, when I was taking a class I wanted to see if I could blank everyone out while focusing on the pose. Even though I spent most of the class looking at myself in the mirror focusing on what the instructor was saying, I could tell you the names of everyone in class and what they were wearing. I seem to be able to take most of everything in.
When I meditate with my eyes closed I can blank most things out. It’s a different story when I have my eyes open.
I wonder if others would share their experiences with focusing?
Dan
So annoying – I seem to be right in the middle. I can tune out to the point that I don’t know who all was in class, or even if it was a small or large class but the people immediately around me I am almost too aware of.
I do have a lot of balance problems …
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