As a parent one of my jobs is teaching my child how to deal with the things that scare her. We went through a stage where she would fall of the edge of the bed and so I taught her what to do if she got into a similar situation again. Holding her gently I helped her learn how to slow down a potential fall or how to get back away from the edge of the bed to safety. My next step is to start taking her swimming again as soon as the weather warms up so that she can remain safe if she accidentally falls into water.
Teaching yoga and having my students practicing handstands and headstands without the use of a wall I have to do the same thing, teach them how to fail safely. For headstands the solution was relatively simple, I taught them how to do a forward roll so that if they fell from a headstand they could roll out of it. (I also taught them to make sure that the area they might fall down within was clear of any objects.) That was what I spent most of my time doing in the three or four months it took me to learn how to balance in headstand. I’d fall. I would try to go up with my legs straight. I would reach a certain point-perhaps legs horizontal, perhaps a little bit higher, and then I would lose it. Back to the drawing board.
Perhaps all that falling is what enables me to do it with such ease now even though I don’t practice it that regularly. So long as my students can fall safely, then they can practice headstand and learn to do it.
That’s another thing I get from watching my daughter who has just learned to walk. At one point she’d walk a few steps then fall. No problem, she’d just get back up again or if she was tired just go back to crawling. The really fun thing to watch is the smile on her face when she is up and walking. Just the simple fact of being able to stay upright (though she does look a little bit like a miniature frankenstein monster when she does walk) she enjoys, and now a whole new world of possibility has opened up. And falling regularly was all part of that process.
Handstand is a bit trickier to fall safely from, so one of the fail safes I teach my students is to walk on their hands with their feet against a wall. The idea then is that if they find themselves falling the wrong way they can walk with their hands to get some stability so that they can fall safely.
Sometimes it can be a bit more challenging to find a safe way to fail that still gives the student the experience they need to learn to do a posture without support. One possible solution is to take them all to the park where the grass offers a soft crash pad.
Why learn to fail? Why practice failing safely? So that we can get on with succeeding. Then a whole new world opens up to us. (and other parents suggest that now my daughter is up and walking trouble awaits-I think possibility awaits.)
On a final note, for somethings there are no “fail safes.” When it comes to the road and traffic, one thing I will have to teacher my daughter is the meaning of the words “No” and “Stop,” at least until she is old enough to understand the dangers for herself.
