Fear Itself

Last night's yoga class made me think about fear, not for the first time. Rational and irrational, in the body and in the mind. The fear I really have to work with there is the fear of inversions--headstands, handstands, and others like Pincha Mayurasana or Peacock Feather Pose. Since we're just starting to learn these, we do them against a wall, with another student assisting. I'm trying to analyze, mostly for myself, what I really fear in them. I have fallen, plenty of times, in poses that don't really frighten me, like Ardha Chandrasana or Half-moon Pose. So rationally I know that I can fall and not really even be sore, let alone get a serious injury. And physically I know that I can do a headstand and a shoulder stand, so my body recognizes the feeling of an inversion. And yet the last couple of times I've tried the more advanced poses, I've been able to get up but was overwhelmed by fear and had to come back down. It's not that I don't feel strong enough to hold myself--I just feel panicked at being in the pose, before I ever have trouble with it.

Sometimes fear is rational. I know that I could force myself into a complete split (Hanumanasana) but always stop when the sense of pulling reaches a certain point because I know with my mind and body that I can hurt my body by pushing it too far. That's nothing like the nonrational but nonphysical fear of inversions.

But the other thing is that I feel most dissatisfied with myself when I leave a class feeling that I haven't really tried as hard as I could, that I've pulled back before failure. When I push to my physical limits, even if I can't make the stretch or hold the balance or don't have the strength, if I've really, really tried, I'm fine--I feel good. But not to try, not to take the chance, leaves me feeling as though I've wasted an opportunity that I might not get again.

Of course yoga really doesn't matter in one sense, after the session is over, but it often teaches me something about the rest of my life. I was thinking about how sometimes in writing I also will feel dissatisfied because I haven't taken the risk I could have taken, haven't pushed quite to the limit, but instead have gone with things I feel safe with, but don't learn from. And my writing, right now, is like my yoga, just a way for me to learn. So why pull back?

I also learn about writing from meditation. Sometimes my worst problem in meditation is not that I can't fix my mind on the object, but that I feel so restless without moving, like I want to rush on to something, anything, not just stay in one place. And sometimes that's true with writing, too--I see the movement of the story so clearly, and want to be riding fast down that road, when what I need to do is slow down, even stop, and look at where I am. And stay there for a while.