Here's a silly one. A few days ago, out of the blue, I decided that the lids of difficult tupperware containers make a great metaphor for all kinds of situations. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Those square plastic containers that you use to store your leftover food? I think they are better designed these days, but I used to always end up with the containers that were freaking impossible to close. Corner number one goes on, no problem. Corner number two is easy, too. Number three's not bad. But then as soon as you try to press down that fourth corner, the first one pops off again. Then when you get number one back down, number three pops up. You get number three down, and number four pops up again. This can go on for a long time...
This is almost exactly the same as my experience in standing separate leg head to knee pose, which is one of my least favorite postures ever. (I had a long conversation with a teacher last Monday about the reasons why I dislike this posture.) It seems like as soon as I get my forehead to my knee, my hip pops up. Then I bring my hip down and try to straighten my front leg, and my chin magically pops away from my chest. Then I get my chin back in (I hate "throat choked") and push my hands against the floor, and there goes the hips again. I feel like I spend the whole posture chasing that one last corner on the tupperware lid, and it just keeps changing positions on me! (Either that, or I slack. Because I don't like this posture. I never said I was perfect!)
This is how I feel about the series as a whole, too. As soon as you get ONE thing down, something ELSE just pops right up! When I start to get the hang of standing head to knee, my standing bow goes to shit. When standing bow starts to get back on track, I can't remember how to do standing head to knee. This isn't always true, but it's a pattern that I've noticed more than once!
The advanced series is even better, because there are so many different postures - so many "corners" to keep track of at once! Lately, I've magically acquired the ability to get some decent height in lifting lotus and I can balance for a while in peacock in lotus, but I've lost all ability to get my shoulders to go behind my legs (I didn't have much of this ability to start with), so crane (which I used to kind of love) is a total joke and all the leg-behind-the-head stuff continues to elude me.
And if the postures behave this way, it's only because our bodies are always changing. Two steps forward here, one step backward there. We get stronger, but lose some flexibility. We get more depth, but lose a little control. Our minds are super-focused while our bodies are tired and achy, or else our mind wanders all the heck over the place while our bodies are in perfect condition. Guess what! That's life!
If I stretch this metaphor to the breaking point, I can even apply it to life. We've all heard different variations on the "Work, socialize, sleep - pick two!" rule. It's almost impossible to get everything in perfect order at the same time. And that's fine. We're not meant to be perfect. There's always something that will slip out of place when everything else is going well, and that's to be expected. Don't worry about it!
But DO try to actually close your tupperware containers all the way, or else you end up cleaning sticky leftovers off the bottom shelf in the fridge.
