The physical expression of full wheel is a beautiful and full-body engaging yoga posture. A lot happens in this pose. There is push and pull, strengthening and release, and when breathe is aligned with movements, there is a deep openness and delightful ease brought through.
There are often emotions that arise from such a full heart-opening posture. It’s quite a vulnerable position with your strong arms and legs holding you up a bit like a table; and your pulsing gentle heart and responsible shoulders wide open to the sky, as the discriminating mind hangs low. Like so…
I can push up into full wheel, except it has never quite felt right or ‘deeply good and opening’ when I did it. My breath struggled and strained and I lose that beautiful dance of inhale and exhale in the posture. When I release down from it, often it takes me several seconds to catch my breath.
In my self practice in the last so many years, I realized I only ever included the push up into full wheel, when I felt I had to prove myself. So, I could never admit to myself that I struggled with the pose. Because technically, I could do it. And it looked fine in classes. As long as I ignored my body and the cramps and glitches in my muscles and was okay with struggled breath.
There is often an energy of force when we exert our will and our mind upon something, especially our bodies. It's not that it is always bad. Sometimes it may actually be helpful when it is required; but it is not required all the time.
My little dalliance with denial what was happening in my body, in this posture. My ego and arrogance helped me see some of my issues around vulnerability - physically, emotionally and spiritually.
It's like when you have an injury, and you cannot do the things you were easily able to do before. You have to surrender. Ask for help receive it and not succumb to wallowing in self pity. Anyone who has taken yoga off the mat into the world knows that our emotions, judgments and stories rise up within just as we are ready to move to our edges. So when I forced myself with shallow struggled breath into full wheel earlier this week, I promptly collapsed knowing I needed help.
As I caught my breath, I decided to feel into my strain, struggle and cramps. As if for years, emotions had been repressed in my shoulders, thighs and behind the heart it all rose to surface - fears of revealing that I was struggling even to myself and the identity shift that came with me being unable to push into this posture; fear of asking for help and being weak; many points of comparison, judgment and inadequacy.
Not all inversion postures bring this up. I had been in wheel many times before and nothing like this happened. But this day, this time was different. I think because for a few seconds I gave myself permission to accept that something was off, and turns out… it was!
After the emotional release, I couldn’t push up into wheel. Not that day or the day after.
Getting Help
A lot of us have experienced the feeling of asking for help, and receiving what is not-that-helpful, which can be one of the reasons we stopped asking for it.
I have found that the best teachers, guides or instructors (in Yoga and in all other areas of study) are the ones that happily shine a light for you, so that you realize all that you can do and more. They are supportive in the ways we need them to be. When we fall, sometimes they are wise enough to just hold out their hand, allowing us to experience what it is to lift ourselves, leaning a little bit for help and encouragement.
They may also know when we're pushing too hard and encourage us to let go and surrender in those times.
Yoga is not about doing the next Instagram worthy posture on a mountain-top. It is about our own personal edges. Often ones that others cannot see.
Maybe your edge is balance and strength and inversions.
Maybe it is quietening your mind.
It could be surrender or in my case, trusting my body and breath during what felt vulnerable and scary.
Somebody once told me that the poses they struggle with the most were the ones where you sit or lie in conscious stillness, breathing in and out, in surrender to liminal space. What was funny, was this person could do most of the inversions easily, and they got in and our of binds and the twists taught in the class we were in. But to be still, to surrender, to not being doing-mode for 5-10mins at the end of class, was very difficult.
I've known some really insecure teachers in my time, on and off the mat. They have taught me what learning is not. Eventually, they provided the perfect opportunities that gave me the courage to listen within and act according to my intuition.
I'm also very lucky to know some really amazing teachers as well.
Joyfully, I met a couple this week during my collapsed wheel experience. I got out of my won way and decided to join a studio, ask for help and receive it.
I learned that I was overusing certain muscles and not using the other ones that were necessary to fully, easily and gracefully express into this posture. I relied on my much stronger muscles, because I knew they were stronger and pushed through, never realizing that my struggled breath was drawing attention to my compensating pattern. All these years and all my understanding of movement, breath and body, and I was still holding on!
We do this in life, don't we?
We compensate so that we can get to things easier, faster and better - ‘the goal justifies the means’ mindset. Perhaps it comes from growing up with the spirit of comparison that overrides collaboration.
Realizing you do something weird, unhelpful, harmful or simply bizarre is one thing. Changing it is another!
When I tried to balance out effort in my muscles groups, I still couldn’t push up into the full wheel post. So, I got annoyed and frustrated, as one does.
The teaching I received at this point, was to return to the ground.
Lie back down, breathe.
Allow my breath to calm the nerves, calm the muscles, and learn to trust the process of change.
I wanted to just “get into the posture already”, so the teaching was to slow it down.
This gives me many opportunities for making micro adjustments at every step the build up to the full expression of the pose.
You see wheel is not just one posture, one pushup.
It involves positioning hands and feet, how the head, neck, shoulders, hips and chest feel or do not feels, whether we choose to move on the exhale or the inhale and whether we choose to come from aggressive frustration or peaceful exploratory love and play in our bodies, at the very least.
We empower ourselves with the 100 tiny choices we make before entering into the full expression of something.
For me, this whole journey was quite literal, as the challenge was in the physical posture, but it was also metaphorical.
When we come into full wheel, or whatever the full expression of something for is for us, we get to build more than just strength and muscle.
We get to build trust in the union of breath and muscle, and perhaps that elevates our relationships with our bodies, our capabilities and our capacity to evolve ourselves.
We get to release a habit or something that doesn’t serve us, and replace it with courage, with a sense of victory and even wonderment.
We learn to surrender our perceived inadequacies, judgements and rigidities and bring in flow, softness and confidence.
We learn to lift ourself with both strength and surrender.
We learn self-reliance and that we can receive help from others.
We allow our body’s natural strength, alignment and balance to shine through.
We get to witness ourselves as humble guides for our breath and life-force as it moves in and out of us, gloriously, playfully and gracefully.