Crows, Falcons, and Farmers
As children our imagination is captivated by larger-than-life figures like Superman and Wonder Woman. As we get older, mythic stories often lose their pull on us. We become so rooted in day-to-day life and responsibilities our connection to the imagination of our youth fades away. Yoga invites us back into a realm of imagination and possibility. A place where our abilities can come alive through our yoga practice and wake up hidden potential lying dormant in ourselves.
Crow/Crane pose (Kakasana/Bakasana) asks us to balance on our hands which has a way of bringing up fears and inadequacies within us. Unless you’ve grown up practicing handstands and cartwheels, holding your own bodyweight on two hands can be a scary task but also one with the power to transform our own sense of self. When approaching this posture, notice if your instant reaction is one of “no way” or “yes way”. The thinking patterns we each grow up with and have carried through life show up on our yoga mat. A physical yoga practice acts like a mirror, it reflects habitual thought patterns and offers us an opportunity to change them if they aren’t serving us in a positive way.
Lifting into Bakasana, we experience the possibility of transforming fear into faith, struggle to strength and “no way” to “yes way”. Placing the hands on the ground, tucking the knees towards the armpits and gently negotiating with gravity until the feet float off the ground – these are all aspects that require courage, they require us to trust ourselves and they require us to bring forth our own magic. When we choose to trust, when we choose to believe we can lift our own body weight, when we choose to support ourselves on just two hands, we cast a spell to transform old patterns of self-doubt into new patterns of confidence and empowerment. We enhance our quality of life not just by building a stronger external body, but by building inner strength too.
There is a story of a king who received a gift of two magnificent falcons. They were the most beautiful birds he had ever seen so he gave birds to his head falconer to be trained. The head falconer soon informed the king while one of the falcons was flying majestically, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived. The king summoned healers and sorcerers from all over to tend to the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly. One day a farmer arrived, climbed up the tree and started sawing off the branch where the bird was perched. Just as the branch began to fall, the falcon spread its wings and flew away.
We are all made to fly. To realize our limitless potential as human beings. But instead we sit on our branches, clinging to the things which are familiar to us. Our possibilities are endless, but for many of us, they remain undiscovered. We conform to the familiar, the comfortable. Crow pose is an opportunity for us to destroy the branch of fear we cling to. A chance to free ourselves from attachment and experience the exhilaration of flight. Letting go of doing the pose perfectly or doing the hardest variation or better yet, that your value as a human somehow depends on how ‘well’ you do the pose.
Simple, yes but not always easy. That’s yoga for you. Keep in mind, all bodies are not created equal. We all have different physical attributes. These attributes affect our natural ability to move certain ways and do certain postures. Like the color and shape of our eyes or hair color, some of us have longer torsos or shorter arms, etc. Add in injuries, repetitive stress or other challenges and it can be easier to understand why this is the case. Crow necessitates shifting your body forward and while we are not placing our weight into the wrists, the wrists must be able to move into a certain degree of flexion. and some people have wrists that won't bend that way and never will because of their skeletal structure.
So now what? Is this figureoutable? Yes, enter resilience. Yoga, like so many situations in life, requires us to pause, reassess and move forward - sometimes with a different approach. Ignore the finish line, aka the pose itself. Yoga is about being present in your body and having an experience. We can still do that. Try practicing Crow on your back or seated. This works the core, legs, arms and puts your body into the shape without forcing the wrists into a position they don't move into. Let go of the attachment to how you think it should be and let it be. Let go of the branch and fly, whether it’s on your hands or on your back. The benefits are limitless.