My Booty and Bakasana

My Booty and Bakasana
By Sylke

How do I put this delicately? You know what? I won't. I am big. I have always been tall and on the larger side. But right now, I am the heaviest I have ever been in my life, and I am finally okay with saying that out loud. I won't say exactly how heavy I am (a true lady never reveals her age…or her weight); I will only say that when I recently looked at the physical stats for the Pittsburgh Steelers I was shocked to discover I might have qualified for the team. Because of my hourglass proportions and propensity to gain weight in the lower half of my body, I am currently packing a little extra heat in the backside, which makes practicing yoga a slightly hilarious and somewhat scary endeavor.

I got this way after suffering a back injury while uninsured and living in New York. For about two months I wasn't able to walk without numbness in my right foot and for a year I couldn't walk or climb stairs without serious pain. Since my circumstances didn't allow for any extensive treatment, at first I got annoyed with my body, and then I just got lazy and let go, figuring I would always hurt. I also had a lot of stress in my life that made it easy to shift my focus onto other things, and away from my body. Then there was living in New York, which means an endless supply of great food that can be delivered directly to your door at all hours. Before I knew it, I had gained 20 pounds.

When I moved back to Columbus to start classes at OSU in the fall of 2007, I made a vow to start exercising. Because of my back injury, I gravitated to yoga. I came to Balanced Yoga on a friend's recommendation. I started in Hatha classes. The first three or four kicked my butt. Slowly, I became stronger and more confident, and eventually joined Vinyasa classes. Here I was confronted with the scariest pose I had ever seen, bakasana, that crazy arm balance where you rest your knees in your armpits and lift your feet off the ground.

Other yoga poses don't make me feel my weight the way bakasana does. The thought of putting the heaviest part of my body, my derriere, onto the weakest part of my body, my arms, is just plain embarrassing. When it came time for bakasana in class, all I could think about was falling, and the loud sound it would make. I felt like my weight was a serious physical limitation and that I would never get my butt in the air. I noted all the students around me, who I perceived as much smaller than I, could get into the pose with no trouble at all. There they all were, floating above the earth, and there I was, frozen to the ground.

I have a supportive therapist with whom I discuss everything, including my struggles with weight. She has been pretty insistent on me "owning" my body. But when I tried to explain bakasana to her with a demonstration, even she said, "Oh no. No way."

I do believe, in my heart of hearts, that yoga is for everyone. But it is a hard thing for me to remember when I am in a room full of people who seem much smaller and therefore much more adept at it than I. So, burdened with my own weight, I figured the "everyone" bakasana was meant for was everyone else, and I gave up on the pose. I wasn't ready to test my own strength.

As I progressed in yoga classes, I was slowly seeing results and even managed to knock out a couple of balancing poses that I initially found really difficult, specifically Half Moon and Tree. I found that as I created these poses for myself, I felt my weight less and less and feared falling less and less. Boosted by the confidence of finding balance on my legs, I eventually set my sights back on bakasana. I practiced plank and chaturanga dandasana with diligence, trying to improve my arm strength. When bakasana appeared in class, I forced myself to put my shins on my bent arms and stick my butt up to get over my embarrassment and actually feel the pose. Eventually I could come all the way up on my tiptoes, nearly balancing my full weight.

Then one night, alone in the privacy of my bedroom, fired up after a great class and convinced that I had finally arrived at my moment, I got into my baby bakasana, sure that I was going to fly. I gingerly lifted one, then two toes off the floor, only to tip forward and land with a solid thud on my forehead. Ambitious, but not very smart and definitely painful. In that moment I became convinced that in order to lick bakasana I needed to lose weight. So for a few months I labored under that assumption. I managed to completely defeat myself and became resentful of my body, and as a result I had to really force myself to keep going to class.

Finally, I decided to break my silence, stop the guesswork and ask some knowledgeable folks about the pose. I assumed that they would tell me in the most polite way possible that I was too heavy and too weak to achieve a full arm balance. Much to my surprise, every inquiry I made netted me the same answer: "It's not about arm strength--it's about core strength.'" Impossible, I thought. How the hell can my core hold my arms and legs together and keep my giant butt in the air? But, wait a minute. Doesn’t my core support me and hold me upright every day just walking around? I figured if it can do that, then maybe this whole bakasana thing was worth looking into again.

So with a new perspective on the pose and with a real emphasis on my concentration in class, I have finally gotten to the point where I feel like lift off is imminent. I no longer blame my weight and all my bad decisions for not being able to get into bakasana. Instead, I am working on making a really long spine, a super strong core and some seriously well integrated shoulders so that someday, hopefully soon, and at my current weight, I can get my feet off the ground without falling.

I guess for me, bakasana has become an exercise in creating strength through acceptance. And I have the sneaking suspicion that arriving in my first bakasana will be only the beginning. If that pose follows the rest of my yoga experience, it will become an action of acceptance, with observable results, that I will only want to repeat over and over again. Hovering over the earth balanced on my arms will become a part of my practice that has nothing to do with the work of balancing my butt, and has everything to do with the joy of supporting my booty.