A Dream Come True…Literally

Last Wednesday, as I was doing mysore with half of the class, I was listening to the other half. “If you cannot do the pose, you can at least visualize it,” said the YT conducting class on introduction to Ashtanga.  

That night, I dreamt I was doing drop-back to get into Urdhva Dhanurasana. Yes, only in my dreams, as I get into the pose from supine position (click here for description of how mere mortals like me do the pose). I found this REM product so hilarious that I sent my yogamates a message saying, “This is beyond visualization…it is actually letting the pose get into your subconscious!” 

During today’s session, I was in this pose (frame 1 below, Jon Cagas in photo) when I heard YT’s instruction “Don’t do anything, just let go.” What else could you do but to follow when your world is turned upside down? The next thing I knew, I was standing up already (frame 3). Whoa! What did just happen?! And I mean inside and out of me. An exhilarating feeling welled up inside me so much so that I had a fit of the giggles afterwards. How YT made me defy gravity, I had no idea. From standing position, YT let me move back to the original pose this time by giving in to gravity. Read: drop-back, free-fall. “Just let go,” YT said and so I did (frames 4 to 6). That was fun!

More than the fun part, what brings me joy and awe—and I guess this also is true to most if not all yoga practitioners—is the realization that I can actually do what I thought I couldn’t. Sometimes, to be able to go beyond what our minds can conceive, we just need an enabler. And trust. 

So is with life in general.