Bucket List Mon Oct 15 2012

My Chicago Bucket List: Standing on My Head to Feel My Heart

By Niki Fritz

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Number Eight: Stand on my head, balance my chakras, find Nirvana

The year was 1996 and I, like the majority of 10-year-old girls, was obsessed with the Women's USA Gymnastics team. It was not just the high ponies encased in scrunchies or the sparkly onesies either; it was the gymnasts' ability to do things with their bodies that seemed physically impossible to me. They were my superheroes, these girls who owned their bodies, who defied gravity and broken ankles.

Unfortunately my early career attempts into professional gymnastics were thwarted by the fact that I was terrible. Like truly awful. I couldn't do a cartwheel to save my dwindling gymnastic career. I could not even master the basics of the tripod head stand.

Part of it was that my chubby little belly got in the way of my legs trying to push up. But mostly, I was terrified... terrified of falling, of breaking my neck, of looking stupid, of being the one 10-year-old who couldn't wobble around in a tripod. But really it was a fear of my body betraying me, of my body not being able to support me, of my body being an embarrassment.

Fearing my body -- or really fearing my body's evident lack of coordination -- was a reoccurring theme throughout the next two decades of my life. When I took my first vinyasa flow class and saw people float their legs up into headstand, I almost had a panic attack. These were people, normal people, doing seemingly impossible things. I knew then that yoga was my chance to relive the 1996 glory years; yoga was my chance to finally stand on my head victoriously, Kerri Strug style.

Little did I realize it would take me another five years and a move to Chicago to make my headstand dreams possible. On a whim, I moved to the windy city in January 2009 after falling in love with Chicago watching Obama's Grant Park acceptance speech. In Chicago everything was new, most things were terrifying and the world seemed upside down for me. And yet there I was standing in it, standing upside down. And this fear, this feeling of being turned upside down, of being perpetually working to stay balanced in another world; it made me a better person. Fear can do that for you if you let it.

I tried a bunch of yoga studios around Chicago, usually through a Groupon since lord knows my $12 an hour job wasn't paying for much except rent and PBR. Each new studio was either too far away, too cliquey, too intense or too hippie.

And then serendipity brought me to Namaskar Yoga at Southport and Irving Park. The board of the women's organization I had joined hosted a wine and art night at Namaskar and I fell in love with the twinkly white lights and worn wood floors. Fate was sealed when I went into the bathroom and a secular version of St. Theresa's prayer was on the mirror. It was a prayer my mum sent to me every time I needed direction or a soothing word.

May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.

To me this poem means, you are here, you are where you are supposed to be, settle into this place, take a few deep breaths here. And so I started going to yoga class every week. Little by little I built up strength, sun salutations became second nature and I became comfortable in my yoga class. I could even do hand stands against the wall like all those little girls in my gymnastics class in elementary school.

But I still needed the wall to do any inversion. I could not stand on my head without first leaning against the wall. I was so close. I would raise my legs up, my toes would touch the wall to make sure I knew it was there and then I would hang out, breathing in the beautiful perspective from upside down, always knowing the wall was there in case I slipped and lost my balance.

But one day I realized the wall, my support, was really becoming an unnecessary crutch. I was musing about this one day after class with my wonderful yoga teacher Jody; she just nodded and said, "Next class you'll do headstand without the wall."

I proceeded to miss the next two classes.

There were legitimate reasons for missing, but really I think what kept me from class the most was the idea that I wasn't ready. That I needed that wall, that I was not strong enough yet.

When I finally did make it back to Namaskar, I wasn't sure I was ready but I also knew I had to try. As Ze Frank would say, "My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark." I need to start.

I nestled my head firmly between my forearms, hands cupping the back of my head. I imagined my arms like two gigantic stable feet ready to hold my entire being on them. I tip toed up, raised one leg and then blindly raised the other. Jody stood behind me, hands behind my calves, encouraging me to squeeze myself in, to bring my strength to my core.

So there I was in headstand without the wall, I breathed it in and out. I had been here before, it felt like home. And then I wavered, just a little, but enough to question my balance and I suddenly remembered the wall wasn't there. There was this ball of fear that formed in my gut, right over the hot heat of strength I had in my core. I wanted to come down, out of this ridiculous headstand. But I didn't.

I squeezed together, focusing my entire body in, and that ball of fear shot through my body, ran down to prickle the skin on my sweaty forearms and up to my internally trembling legs. With it, came every single fear I currently hold in my sometimes neurotic head. The fear of not getting into a PhD program, the fear of getting in but becoming a dickish professor type, the fear of never finding love again, the fear of finding love but losing myself, the fear of staying, the fear of going, the fear of never quite being who I want to be, the fear of never quite knowing who it is exactly that I want to be.

It flooded my being. When I finally came out of headstand and rested in child's pose, I felt like my blood was trembling, with energy, with fear, but mostly with gratitude. To know my fears, to be able to feel them, was to me a gift. It was like seeing this secret part of myself; as if being upside down is what I needed to see the other side of myself, not the part that is pushing forward but the part that is holding me back. It was the fear that I would lose myself, that I did not have enough strength to know myself, to support myself and to love myself.

The point of this ridiculously long story is that life will often bring you where you need to be. And sometimes you need to be upside down. What I was yearning for when I watched those magic gymnasts flip all over my TV screen was a sense of connection between the body and the heart, of knowing fear but jumping, leaping, standing anyway. I was craving to know all of myself, inside out and upside down.

And that is what this life is teaching me slowly with each column, each new friend, each failure, each victorious moment and each headstand. Life is teaching me to know myself well enough to stand upside down in order to feel my heart.