Drop back freak out

Tags

drop backs, Monkey mind, panic attacks, teacher training, trust, Vinyasa, yoga

A bird sitting in a tree is not afraid of the branch breaking because her trust is not in the branch, but in her own wings.

-Anonymous

After years of contemplation, I am finally doing yoga teacher training. It’s training in hot Vinyasa, which I’ve been integrating into my Bikram practice for a while now.

While the training is really wonderful — it’s really freaking me out. That’s also how I know it’s good.

We did assisted drop backs the other day. A drop back is where you stand there and backbend so far that your hands hit the ground and you end up in wheel pose. It looks like this:

via Yoga Journal

It sucks.

It sucks not just because it’s physically hard, it sucks because it’s mentally hard. Really hard. As evidenced by the fact that I kinda had a panic attack and cried when faced with the prospect of doing it.

Now, I’m not one of those people who can cry with any subtlety. If I’m crying, everyone within a half-mile radius knows it. I am without a poker face.

So, I was in class, standing there and crying, with my teacher supporting my hips. I began to bend backwards and my monkey mind took over. And it totally trashed the joint.

All my trust issues and all my fears cozied up to me on that yoga mat. Every person who had ever let me fall came into exquisitely painful focus. I thought of everyone who I expected to be there, everyone I thought could hold me up when I most needed it, everyone who turned away when I needed support.

I remembered every time I felt like I was in free-fall, failing around, disoriented and not sure when I would hit the ground, but knowing that the crash landing would destroy every part of me. I thought of when my back was broken, when my heart was broken, when my soul was broken.

And I froze and cried some more.

I could not do this.

And then, Kelly, my teacher, did what all gifted yoga teachers do. She said the thing that I had no idea that I needed to hear.

“It’s all about trust. And it’s not about trusting me. It’s about trusting you.”

I took a breath. And then I did a drop back.

I decided to trust myself. Which is not easy, since there have been moments when even I didn’t hold myself up in the way that I most needed. But I decided to forgive myself for those past blunders, and trust that in this moment, I was going to support myself fully. I was going to be my own best ally and cheerleader and friend. I was going to trust that I’d be okay. Even if I fell.

But I didn’t fall. I caught myself.

As we moved on to the next postures, Kelly gave us corrections and had a question for me:

“Hey Lisa, do you know you have a giant grin on your face right now?”

I didn’t know. But I wasn’t surprised.

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Bikram yoga for panic attacks

Tags

Bikram yoga, life lessons, meditation, panic attacks

I’ve heard several people say that they don’t like Bikram yoga because it’s not meditative or spiritual. I suppose on the surface it looks like boot camp, but it is not purely physical; it is an incredibly deep meditative practice.

I get panic attacks. I have been carried out of restaurants, bars, house parties and art galleries because I am a hyperventilating, sobbing mess. For a time they were so debilitating it was difficult to leave my house.

I thought Bikram might help me manage stress but I was very nervous about trying it. It involved going to a place I had never been and staying in a room for 90 minutes with people I didn’t know. This is a terrifying prospect for someone with panics like mine. I literally had an entire therapy session dedicated to discussing if I could survive my first Bikram yoga class.

I did survive. In fact, I thrived.

It is all well and good to meditate in a candle lit room with soothing music and people using gentle voices. It does feel great and I enjoy those types yoga classes, too. But they didn’t help me with my reality. I need to learn to relax when my brain throws some serious, hardcore panic at me.

Bikram has trained me to breathe and meditate when I am trapped in a room that is really bright, a million degrees, packed with people who smell and a teacher who is loud. That’s why I can now survive life in my head.

When I panic, it is bright and loud and I’m dizzy and nauseous. I can’t run away from that situation, either, but that’s fine because this yoga has taught me that there are options beyond fight or flight.

I rarely get panic attacks anymore. I have the same stress and the same triggers. The panics rise up and threaten me; they insist that I can’t breathe and I am going to die immediately. Then, I hear my teacher:

Meet resistance with breath. – Lizzie.

Don’t meet panic with frustration or defeat or anger. Just take a moment. Then, I hear another teacher:

This is going to hurt like hell. It’s O.K. Don’t be scared.  – Kirk.

I know I can do it, I can make it through this just like I make it through class four times a week. Then, I hear another teacher:

Deep breath in. Let it out slow. – Amy

And that’s exactly what I do.

The hot room is my training ground for the real world. Those instructions – seemingly about my physical practice – are the deepest, most spiritually profound lessons I could imagine.

Maybe it looks like boot camp to you, but to me, it’s church.

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