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Learning to Fall

Decades ago my first yoga instructor, Gloria Pilot, saw that I was struggling with learning how to do a shoulder stand. She did the best coaching thing, which was to ask me to tell her what was wrong. I thought about it and said that I was afraid of falling and that made me shake more than I should going into the stand.

She asked me what would happen if I fell. There was room around my mat, so I wouldn't strike anything. I had taken enough Judo classes by that point to know how to fall safely. Others in the class were struggling to learn the pose so I don't think my embarrassment at falling would be that great.  We discussed this, and then she urged me to practice starting the shoulder stand and intentionally falling.

It felt silly at first but it made her point, both rationally and at the muscle-memory level. It would be better not to fall but in this context the cost of falling was minimal. After that she encouraged me to try to do the shoulder stand correctly. It didn't happen miraculously or immediately but by the end of class I could go up into the shoulder stand more often than not.

That lesson has stayed with me. If you are afraid of the consequences of failure enough to stop you from succeeding, it is not only strategic but right (on a fundamental level) to stop and face those consequences head on. The strength of fear is its ability to make us look away from something we care about. 

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