Trust the fall. It's inevitable.

It's been a bit of an icky, rainy day here for the first time in ages, so I've been spending much of it indoors (first time in ages, again).

Choices are a lot on my mind lately. The situation is. The fall happens. It's you who chooses what to do with it. So rather than choose to mope around the house and complain about the weather, I took this as an opportunity for some quiet time. I would've said me time, but all my time is me time, I'm fortunate in that.

Among the opportunities I chose to take today was a long (90 minute) yoga practice, which is something I've longed for for months, but when the sun's hot outside, and the day's busy, who has time? Even 45 minutes of practice have been a luxury lately, so today, after a brief walk, I said okay, let's get to it.

My yoga mat and my little helpers, Vladimir and Estragon, who hold the mat from rolling up on me.

Yin yoga is a deeper form of yoga, which I personally prefer to the more dynamic, vinyasa type practice. In yin, the poses are fewer, but held for much longer (anywhere from 3 to, in some cases, 8 minutes), which is a lot more taxing on the muscles and the body, but also a lot more liberating for me.

One of the lessons in yin yoga, one that particularly speaks to me, is that you should never strain to attain the pose right away. You won't, and may end up hurting yourself in the process. And yet, if you sit in a comfortable pose that's "on the way", gravity will naturally pull you deeper into it, as the timer progresses.

Now, I'm someone who very much wants to barrel through things, and get to the perfect pose right away, but yin forces me to take things a little different. Maybe that's why I like it. See, if you force yourself into the "proper position", you may be able to hold it for the typical 10, 20, 30 seconds. But not for 5 minutes, not without doing damage to the muscle. So, wishing to hold the pose for the full time, and not just tap out within the first thirty seconds, I'm forced to take things slower, to sit in a pose that's comfortable for my flexibility at that point in time.

I find that, doing this, gravity does -- as promised -- carry me the rest of the way. Several times during today's practice, I found myself irked at how high my shoulder was off the ground in a twist, for instance, only to find that, by the time the counter sounded to come out of the pose, it had come down by itself.

I found that, the more I relaxed into it, the easier it got for me, not just to hold the poses, but to delve deeper into them. Which, as I say, is a challenging lesson for me, because I am stubborn. And proud. And like to do things on my own time.

Doesn't always work.

Today's practice tied into something my dancing instructor told me. About falling, or rather, dropping to the floor. I was saying how hard it was for me, how stilted it felt, and how I worried about others doing it. I said, won't I hurt myself? and she told me, only if you brace.
...then proceeded to fall to the floor, while her whole body was tensed, eliciting a serious thump.

If you flow with the fall, you'll feel it much less, and will be able to get up much more easily.

I never would've thought how you fall would matter so much. Perhaps because we make such a negative thing of falling. Someone's fall typically inspires negative connotations. My face fell -- shock, disbelief. Fell through. Fell off. Fall into the wrong hands. Fall head over heels.

All of these bespeak danger, wariness. Bracing. All great ways to hurt yourself more.

I did find one that aligns with the lesson -- fall into place. Which is what I did on my mat today. Which also implies not being in place from the get-go. Sometimes, you have to leave your shoulder a little awkward above ground, and trust the road will eventually carry you where you want to be. Or perhaps where you're supposed to be, as the two don't always coincide, and if it doesn't reach the floor today, maybe it's not where you're supposed to be just yet.

Until then, it might not be so bad to ask for a little help. That's another thing I find tricky in my yoga practice (and, oh so much, in my life). The use of blocks, bolsters, bands, or any other "little helpers" only comes into play to intensify poses for me, to make me go deeper. Not today, though. Choosing to trust the fall, I also took the opportunity to trust my body when it told me a bolster would be nice, because the floor's a little unfriendly today.

It hurts tremendously to ask for help sometimes. Or to accept it, when offered. But I'm learning new ways to make it a little easier.

Choices. Don't always work. Not always the right ones. But not always wrong, either.