CAMILA MATOS

This past month took it’s toll on me physically. I have been striving to improve myself in every way possible and pushed myself so hard that my body retaliated in full force.

One Saturday I was sitting cross-legged leading a meditation. As I stood up to move through my students and offer deepening adjustments, my right knee popped. A deep, dull, thudding “pop” noise that left radiating pain moving up and down my leg. I had little choice but to keep moving so I did just that and it wasn’t until later that I noticed I could barely bend my knee without experiencing pain. A few days rest, some anti-inflammatories and heat/cold compresses and I started to feel better. My knee and I were speaking again.

A few weeks later, I was out on a run. It was a Wednesday afternoon, 96 degrees. I had left work hungry, but decided to get a quick run in prior to lunch. It was about 2:45pm when I began. By 3:30pm I was under a tree awaiting an ambulance. I overheated and became very, very dehydrated. It was scary - my body felt like it was falling apart and in that moment, there was nothing I could do. My entire life is spent trying to make better choices for myself - physically, mentally, emotionally. The choices I make for my life are always with the intention that this is better for my health and happiness. Yet here I was, healthy choices be damned, in the ER.

The good news is that I’m ok - I am healthy, I am well. However, my dharma, it seems, is to learn balance. To bring some relaxation into my life and to be ok with relaxing. So, to that end, I spent Memorial Day weekend doing nothing. Yes, nothing. I went home, visited my family, spent all day lazily loafing by the pool, eating my mom’s delicious food (she’s a chef!) and reading The Tipping Point. It was divine! I slept in until 9am! I slept so well and drank water and relaxed and my brain just melted in a pool of warm honey. It was lovely.

After coming back to Austin, I relaunched my yoga practice. It had been about a week without yoga - the longest period of time I’d spent away from my practice in years and years - and the first downward facing dog was brutal. It’s shocking how taking even just a short period of time away from your practice really degenerates all the advances you’ve made!

So here I am, almost two weeks away from my dehydration. Three weeks away from my knee injuring. Feeling much better in every capacity. I have been focusing on my yoga practice diligently and moving through it with so much gratitude. It’s perhaps not been a blessing in disguise, but some sort of wake up call. Oftentimes it’s so easy to become thoughtless about all the progress we’ve made in yoga or in life. We know it took hard work to get where we are, but we forget or take it for granted. Then something swings along, knocks you on your butt and you have to stand up, eyes wide in surprise, dust yourself off and try again. Start from zero and work your way up. And working back up, although difficult, is incredibly delightful! My practice was so hard and challenging, it felt like I was back in my first ever yoga class, arms trembling ferociously as I struggled to maintain my down dog.

So I’m practicing balance in my life - working hard, relaxing plentifully. Taking pleasure in small things, appreciating my body’s signals to rest, and remembering the dedication to my practice that’s gotten me this far so I never lack gratitude again.

So this is what I’m doing on my day off..

A year ago I couldn’t do headstands.

I remember being at my Yoga Teacher Training in January, 2012 at the Radha Madhav Dham and my fellow trainees were playing with an inversion stool. The would pop up, play with leg variations, come down exhilarated. For me, even a supported inversion was too terrifying at that time - never in my life had I been upside down! I’d never done gymnastics so cartwheels, forward rolls, etc had never been part of my life. The idea of being able to do a headstand seemed ludicrous and unattainable; to me, only the very strong, very brave and very flexible could be capable of such a feat!

Skip forward a few months. It’s early summer and I’ve begun to get more and more courageous in my Dolphin pose. I lift one leg and hold for a few breaths, then switch and do the other side. Sometimes when I’m feeling really brave I kick one leg up and come crashing down ungracefully.

At home, I play with kicking up to the wall. After the first time I’m capable of getting both legs up and straight for a few breaths, I collapse into Child’s Pose and cry because I’m so happy and proud. I’ve accomplished something I’ve never before done!

Over the course of the next few months I hop up to the wall over and over and over again. I’m clumsy, but it becomes more familiar and easier. Of course, I’m continuing my practice during this time and overall, my body is stronger and more flexible.

In March, I took a workshop with Schuyler Grant of Kula Yoga. It was an inversions and backbends workshop - one of the most humbling 2.5 hours of my life. I swear to god I’ve never felt so strong and incapable at the same time. At some point while walking around and giving directions, Shuyler Grant said to me “you don’t need the wall.” Of course, at the time that sounded like absolute nonsense, I’d tried once without the wall and promptly fell over onto my back. Soooo clearly Ms Grant didn’t know what she was talking about  - I needed the wall otherwise I’d fall and injure myself, for sure.

It was in this workshop that I learned the one thing that changed my approach to headstand:

1. From Dolphin, inhale and lift your right leg up to the sky.

2. Square your hips so that they’re level, right toes pointing down to the ground. Stay active through the ball of your right foot, engage pada bandha.

3. Hug muscle to bone, engage the quadriceps.

4. Bend the left knee, lifting onto the ball of the left foot.

5. Using the left leg as a piston, press off the left foot, lifting both legs into the air. As you lift up, bend the right knee to propel that leg overhead.

6. At this point, you can easily (maybe not so easily?) leverage your way into a headstand. Use the core to bring both legs strongly and actively overhead.

This I practiced against a wall endlessly and something began to happen. As I used my legs like pistons it became easier to find my way up without the wall. I used to plant all ten toes against the wall and very trepidatiously bring one leg and then the other away. Then I’d be able to bring my legs up without the wall at all. Finally over a year after my training, I was in a headstand. No wall, no support, maybe a little bit of fear. But mostly, excitement.