I’ve just come back from a week’s skiing. My first in my life. I have a terrrible and sometimes quite disabling fear of heights, and skiing, much as I love mountains has always been a no no. Latterly, what with my dodgy knees, and the way everyone gasps when you mention knees and skiing in the same sentence, I truly thought it was not for me. However, at this time of my life I like to challenge myself to my limits and this was one area that needed challenging, so armed with a very expensive knee support from a proper skiing shop (did you know such a thing existed?) I set off with my son and husband for Andorra.
My yoga practise got me through what ended up being a fantastic week, and every day I spent at least an hour doing different calf muscle postures: all kinds of forward bends, downward facing dog, standing poses.
The pose that was with me most of all, though, was the Mountain pose, Tadasana, one of the most difficult of all the postures. For all that you think you’re doing nothing but standing up straight this posture holds within it the true essence of yoga for me. I have heard more than once that yoga is not about learning to stand on your head, but about learning to stand on your own two feet.
At every anxious moment I aimed to stand in Tadasana and observe my breathing, placing myself steadily on my own two feet. When I was side on to the mountain and my legs were screaming with pain and tiredness I was desperate to be able to stand up straight. Those damned ski boots have you standing in the most peculiar position. I took a private ski lesson with an impossibly handsome Spanish instructor who kept telling me to focus on my feet. “The feet are the mos importan, don ignorr the feet…” How mortified was I when he pointed out I didn’t stand evenly on my feet and legs but had a definite tilt on my right leg. When I told him I was a yoga teacher he asked me “Why you don breathe then?”
At the end of the day, I relearned the same old lesson I seem to keep on learning. When I practise Tadasana, I’m developing resilience, i.e. the ability to cope in life no matter what happens, the ability to stand on my own two feet. I finally got up the mountain on my last day. I worked hard. I focussed. I controlled my feet and legs. I relaxed and breathed. I skied. I got crashed into by someone behind me. Twice. I twisted my knee. I picked myself up and carried on down the bloody mountain.
I cannot control the world. I can master myself however, and take responsibility for my own responses and actions. I can stand on my own two feet. The fear of not being able to control a scary and unpredictable world seems, in my case at least, to be more to do with not being able to control myself. I could’ve given up when I was injured: I was furious that despite my best efforts, I still ‘failed’ in looking after myself. I decided though that to give up would be the failure and mastered my upset and disappointment (eventually) and remembered I can’t control the world, only myself. Now I feel triumphant: yes I have a sore knee, but I can ski, and I can stand on my own two feet coming down a mountain.
