Balancing The Edge

Sharon Gannon and David Life have written "Yoga is who you are.". Rather than being a quirky cliché, what it means is that whoever we are, our stuff- good and not so good - will show through our practice. The more challenging the practice, the more stuff will come up. This is when yoga really is revealed as far more than a physical practice. I find this to be especially true for balancing postures (for other people, other postures will trigger their target issues).
When I'm really tired or agitated, I often feel a tinge of flight reflex when I know that standing leg raises (Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana) are drawing nearer and nearer in my standing seqence. Leaning my chin toward my shin seems like such a chore and I am often tempted to just do the asana without leaning forward. Far from it being a purely physical thing, it is clear that what throws me out of balance is my generally unbalanced energy at that moment. I have done the posture countless times during years and years of my practice and STILL when my energy is a bit off, I find it challenging. On "good" days, it comes so easy that it`s difficult to imagine I ever found it difficult and then there are other days...
As in any other asana, what I find happens is that the practice communicates to us exactly what it is that we need. More stability, more strength, more focus, more breath. It tells us that in order to get to where we need to be, we need to release the mundane jitters of everyday life. Acknowledge them, keep your breath steady and release them. Shit happens and you don´t need to roll around in it but acknowledge that it happens and why it happens and take it from there. We need to know ourselves better and more honestly in order to get those asanas steadier and stronger. We all need to be truthfull to ourselves, both in our asana practice and at any other time, if we are ever to get to any place sensible. Mr Iyengar says that every cell in the body needs to know what to do. Now, this is a great truth. Since who and how we are, both at the moment and at any given time, is bound to seep into any posture we do (the harder the posture, the more of a challenge this will present), we need to direct our energy in a way that serves our purposes. This is extremely metaphoric for life. Things will happen as they do. Often times we like it, other times we don´t. And so what? Like leaning your chin toward your shin in Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana, the goal is knowing where you need to get yourself. Where do you need to go? So, at those jittery moments, I tend to take an extra breath, remind myself of exactly what it is that I am doing. I anchor my standing foot and try to spread the energy of my steady breath through my body. I try to inform every cell in my body of what the task is. And I relax. At a workshop Edward Clark did in Oslo, he said to us that we should think of what our dharma is, what we have to give to the world and put that into our practice. I loved this - it truly struck a major chord in me. The practice will inform us of where we´re at and who we are, if we are willing to listen. Now, we can choose to ignore this, but if we´re ever to get to any kind of goal that is worth while, where we really are at needs to be respected and acknowledged. If we don´t, something might snap, or the asana will seem impossible, or the breath will get uneven, or all those things at the same time. I remember when I started practicing Koundinyasana B (check out the picture), how I got all panicky and panting. I was all in my arms and I tended to forget to breathe. It was SO hard. So, first I decided that I just wasn´t strong enough. Then I tried it again and I just floated up. The difference wasn´t in my strength. What happened was that instead of just practicing the physical posture, I practiced yoga. Meaning that my breath was there, my focus was there, I was being honest and I took it from where I really was, instead of where my frantic, panting delusion told me I was. And It was delicious. The way it needs to be. The way my arms shook a little was delicous. The way it didn´t matter because I was really steady and there was delicous. Gannon and Life say that you can´t hold your balance - you have to reach for it. This, I think, is one of those things you can´t really grasp by analyzing what they might have meant by that. I honestly think that this needs to be practiced to be experienced and understood. You need to be thrown off balance and get yourself back into it to really understand. And then, the time comes when it actually does work. That´s how we balance the edge. That´s what yoga practice is all about.