Falling: A Yoga Theme for Letting Go

our seasonal focus for the latter half of Autumn

Falling into Fall

Sometimes when I picture ‘the perfect yoga pose,’ it’s balanced, strong, graceful, and still. Sometimes that perfection translates into never falling, a.k.a. never being out of alignment or making mistakes. But then, I tend to come to this question: what’s the point? 

Shouldn’t yoga be a practice of taking a load off ourselves instead of adding additional pressure?

Not to say that we should never strive for balance, good alignment, or building endurance and focus by holding yoga postures. But imagine, if you judged your child every time they fell when they were learning to stand and walk…

Let’s take the opportunity to use our yoga practice to mother ourselves through the ups and downs of parenting (and life in general!). You are a Yoga Mama and one of the benefits of being a truly balanced Yoga Mama is staying devoted to mothering yourself as well as your children. Part of learning to navigate motherhood gracefully (at least for me) has been the process of learning to nurture myself the way I would my kids.

So, as we go deeper into the Fall season, let’s wonder together: how can we mother and nurture ourselves when we fall in our yoga practices? What does it mean to fall in yoga (not just wobbling out of balancing poses, but flowing with the pull of gravity instead of striving in the opposite direction of it?). Also, is there value in falling intentionally, gracefully, and with a sense of release?

Our Seasonal Focus: Falling 

At the Fall Equinox, I wrote about a seasonal theme of shifting. It was an invitation for all of you Yoga Mamas to shift into Autumn with awareness and appreciation of your bodies, minds, and lives.

As we pass Samhain/Halloween/All Souls Day, otherwise known as the midpoint between Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice, I want to invite you to learn to “fall” with purpose in your yoga practice. Let go of that perfect pose, of that idea of what yoga ‘should’ be, and pay homage to gravity instead of trying to defy it all the time with dramatic, flashy yoga poses.

Let me clarify, though: I’m not asking you to literally fall down on your yoga mat. What I’m getting at here is probably better described as ‘getting down.’ How do we descend onto the ground, or get down towards the earth using yoga? How do we do this while letting go of the idea of perfect alignment or looking good (versus feeling good)?

Here’s a little exploration of how we do that physically, with movement and breath:

 

Bringing it into the Bodymind: bhavana

You might have heard the cliche phrase that yoga is more about being than it is about doing. This is somewhat true in my opinion (though we have to do some amount of ‘doing’ in the practice), but I would also like to add that yoga is also about feeling. We can do this through interoception (noticing our sensations in our bodies, our thoughts, and our emotions) and also through the practice of bhavana.

What is bhavana? Think of it as infusing your yoga practice with a feeling or attitude. I tend to imagine a dancer that brings emotion into their performance; you wouldn’t want to watch someone robotically moving through choreography, would you? Bhavana is an invitation to go beyond going through the motions of practice. Here’s a nice article I found on what bhavana is and how you can integrate it into your life.

So what sort of bhavana can we infuse our ‘falling yoga’ practice with? Some years ago I wrote a kids yoga blog post on different ways of falling and it might give you some ideas on how we can express that falling energy in different ways. Last week I shared a kids yoga practice called vowel breath, so the linked post above could be a good accompaniment. But, if you want a more ‘grown-up’ idea of bhavana for falling in our yoga practice, it helps to think of words or images: imagine the soft energy of autumn leaves floating down to the ground; then again, if it’s a windy day, they might flutter down or cascade down. The words are key here to giving hints about the bhavana. In the yoga video above, I provide a little inspiration for rolling down towards the ground in uttanasana and some other more dynamic ways to let the weight of our torsos fall with gravity.

For some additional inspiration, here’s a past post on a sequence for getting down on the ground. Throughout motherhood I’ve had this recurring thought that whenever I get down on the ground to play with my kids, maybe I should use a little yoga sequence to bring myself to the rug. In addition to the ‘get-down’ sequence in the video above, I’ll share a few more in the weeks to come.

Until then, remember this:

 “I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.” -Martha Graham

By the way, in posting this a few days late, I’ve accidentally posted it on the new moon. I love to acknowledge the phases of the moon as ways to mark time using the cycles of nature; it’s also an opportunity to explore different energies and the new moon invites us to look inward, introspect, and set intentions. So, with this theme of Falling with purpose and feeling, what is an intention that speaks to you? I’ll touch upon this again on Friday!