It came to me in Forearm Stand, a pose that had eluded me for years.

I was using the wall, as usual, and as I hovered there, holding my breath, heels resting on the wall, a thought suddenly entered my mind.

It didn’t move across my brain like a wispy cloud in the summer sky, it didn’t politely knock first like a girl scout selling cookies, it exploded onto the scene like a grenade falling in the trenches…

”Holy shit I’ve been living in fear”…followed by silence, followed by panic.

Yoga will put you face to face with your truth and your fear. I’ve heard it a million times, I’ve said it a thousand. It always just sounded like a really cool cliche, I hate to admit it, but I might have thought that it was a lesson for some other yogi. I’m a teacher, I’m supposed to have this all figured out before I go spreading the good word to my trusting students…right?

Well here I was, a certified yoga teacher, coming face to face with my own truth after a decade of practice.

And if I didn’t hear it the first time—

“Holy sh*t I’ve been living in fear.”

That’s all it said, it didn’t expound on the details or offer advice, no words of encouragement, just the plain old truth. Another thing about truth, besides that it can bitch slap you out of a forearm stand in an instant, is that your heart always knows what it is, our mind is just really good at denying it.

The instant after the thought exploded in my brain, my heart confirmed the facts. It was true, I had been driven by a fear that I had accepted as my true nature long ago. The fear had spread far and wide, I had fears of falling, failing, not living, losing people, who knows where they came from, these were details to work out later, or not. For now, all I knew was that I couldn’t deny what I now knew. As I crumbled to the floor, narrowly escaping a serious neck injury, I thought about running but instantly knew that I couldn’t run from myself or my fear.

Alone in the studio with my newly discovered truth, I had nowhere to go except child’s pose. The ultimate pose of surrender was all I could do.

I stretched out my arms, closed my eyes and inhaled an acceptance so deep that it felt like my heart might explode against my lungs. I held that breath, that acknowledgment of my fear, until I felt it start to dissolve and soften and then with every ounce of surrender that I had I exhaled…I exhaled. The sense of release was tremendous, I felt like something had been gripping every cell in my body for years and it had just let go. It was my fear, I had acknowledged it, accepted it and then let it go, in one foul swoop, on my yoga mat.

I instantly wondered if the same fear that I had been carrying around with me, in my life off the mat, had been infiltrating my practice. Why else would I still be practicing Pincha Mayurasana at the wall a decade later?

I don’t know if it came from my newfound fearlessness or an overwhelming curiosity but from my child’s pose I gently came up on my forearms and tucked my toes, I lifted my hips to dolphin and calmly, with a soft and even breath, lifted into forearm stand, away from the wall, without fear, for the first time ever.

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Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Anne Wu at Flickr