handstands

 I had coffee on sunday with one of my closest friends, who was also my first buddhist teacher. Over the years our friendship has become a kind of sangha of two. We've shared our deepest struggles and trusted each other to offer wisdom and compassion. Our conversations have the tendency to start with very simple topics and end in very deep revelations. But over the past few months, something has been off. She's been going through a lot of pain in her life and I often felt unable to offer her anything of value. 

After a few minutes of ordinary catching-up, I mentioned that a mutual friend of ours had felt like I was being short with him lately. I told Ellen that I recognized myself being impatient with him, but that there was no real reason for it, certainly nothing that he'd done and so I had apologized. 

Ellen was silent for a moment and then she said 'I've felt the same thing, like you're different in the past few months.' 

I thought back to the past few months and pointed out a few instances where I had recognized that something was off in myself. In the summer, during a yoga class, my teacher had pointed out that I'm pretty fearless with inversions. I don't have any trouble popping up into a bridge or leaping face down into a handstand. She suggested I try to go into a handstand from downward facing dog, instead of leaping into it like a gymnast. That way, the handstand would be grounded from the strength of my core instead of relying on momentum. And I had spent the next couple months thinking about that. My habit has always been to leap into things and not be afraid, but when it comes to things that require stability and groundedness, I find myself floundering. Talking to friends of mine who do yoga and have trouble going into inversions, I realized that the idea of flipping upside down was the antithesis of security to them. But to me, perhaps I didn't feel grounded enough when I was upright to really feel the insecurity of being upside down. 

I began to consider the root chakra. In the fall, I visited friends in Europe and on the flight into Paris I felt the city pull to me as strongly as it ever had, perhaps more so. But as much as my heart rejoiced in that feeling of homecoming, my mind worried over my struggle to find a way to make Paris my home more permanently. In the weeks after that trip, I found myself becoming dizzy and feel disconnected to my life in Philly. I felt powerless to create the massive change I wanted to make in my life. So in the span of a few months, prompted by my efforts to do a handstand from a position of power and stability - I began to open up the energy blockages in my root chakra (groundedness, stability), sacral chakra (trust in emotional nourishment, acceptance of change)  and solar plexus chakra (personal power)  that were impeding me from finding a way to act. 

I shared some of this with Ellen, explaining that I've felt disconnected for a while and just kind of overwhelmed. She listened and then, explaining her experience talking to me in the past few months, said 'A lot of the time, when we were talking, I would share something and your response felt like you hadn't really heard me. Which never happened with you before. You always used to hear what was between the lines and respond to what I was really saying, even if I wasn't able to articulate it.' 

And that's when I realized that my heart was clogged up. 'I know what you mean. My responses missed the mark because I was listening to you with just my mind, not my heart.' 

As I said it I recognized the truth of it, all of this energy swirling around in the first three chakras, all these fears about not being powerful enough, connected enough, supported enough had reached the fourth chakra - the heart.  And instead of letting the heart be compassionate toward my fears, I shut it down and tried to find a solution with my mind. 

My teacher once equated each of the first four chakras with a natural element. The root chakra is earth, the sacral- water, the solar plexus - air and the heart chakra - fire. He reminded us that the heart chakra is the biggest of all the chakras and he equated it to a furnace or the sun. It is more powerful than we ever give it credit for. It has the power to clear blockages in the other chakras - through compassion. 

My friends were the helpful mirror who showed me that my heart wasn't open to them, which made me realize that my heart wasn't open to myself, either. So all the handstands I tried, all the analysis used to solve my struggles with the first three chakras - they wouldn't work unless my heart was open. 

Because as the Little Prince told us, 'It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.'