RE: Your natural ability to correct yourself.

As you may know, I am training for the Illinois Asana Championships. This involves finding two 'freestyle' poses. These poses can be any pose from the advanced series. A feat complicated by the fact that I have never taken an advanced class. A friend and fellow competitor has had the privilege of being able to yell, "Cock!" on stage for the last several years under the guise that his posture is called that. Being thrilled with the idea of screaming "COCK!" to an audience without being thrown from the stage, I wanted to try my hand at the pose.

A teacher I highly admire was giving me some pointers last week. Showing me how to lean forward into the pose, the teacher encouraged me to lean forward as far as I could onto my palms. "When you feel like you may fall forward tighten your belly and pull up. Don't worry that you will fall forward, you will catch yourself before you do." he said, helpfully.

I pointed out that I had, not one week earlier, tried a transition into crow pose from standing. In this transition, when another teacher said, "Now lean forward and bend your elbows down just a bit." My elbows bent, wiggled a bit and gave way. I collapsed, face-first, into the floor. I heard a little 'pop' when as my nose hit, but there was no blood. Which is good because, out of embarrassment, I quickly threw myself up to standing, hands above head and shouted, "Im okay! Everything's good!" This would have looked even more ridiculous had there been blood streaming from my face.

One week prior:

The teacher was unmoved by my story of peril. In fact, it proved his point. "See," he explained happily, "you stopped yourself with your face!"

I am now absolutely sure that the fact that I am frightened of neither the instructor nor the pose verifies that I am mentally deficient.