“The Tadasana Challenge”
The below article was submitted by our dear friend and Austin, TX based writer/yoga teacher/heath outreach coordinator/all around great person Julia Winston. Would you like to learn more information on how to contribute to our site? Have some articles of your own that you would like to submit? Email us at info@yoganonymous.org
The Tadasana Challenge
By Julia Winston
Let’s take a break from the unnecessarily complicated state of things for a moment and bring it back to simple. In fact, let’s start at square one: Tadasana. Mountain Pose. Arguably the most basic yoga pose, Tadasana quite strikingly resembles standing around. But let’s take a moment to put this deceivingly simple posture into perspective. As my teacher at Dharma Yoga, Keith Kachtick, says of Tadasana, “There was one point in your life when this pose was actually extremely difficult.” Think about that for a minute. Remember when you had stumpy, chubby little bowlegs and you just couldn’t, for the life of you, hold yourself up in the desperately alluring homo-erectus position? No matter how hard you tried, you would fall on your butt. Sometimes the shock and frustration of the fall sent you into a hollering, miserable crying fit. (Thank god for Huggies.)
Well, perhaps infancy takes things a little too far back… So remember when you were 26 years old and you moved from New York City back to your hometown of Austin, Texas and worked for your mom and lived with your parents and didn’t have a car or a space to call your own? I do, because it’s happening. Right now. To me. And I kind of feel like I’m back at square one, minus the drool. It’s times like these when a frequently overlooked pose like Tadasana comes back into the limelight after being largely forgotten for nearly a quarter of a century. Apparently, standing on your own two feet is not as easy as it seems.
I’ve spent the entirety of my young adulthood traveling and exploring, teetering about the world like a toddler in discovery mode–no credit cards, no car payments, no real responsibility. Suddenly I’m back at home, in the company of the people who used to lift me up when I fell, and I feel like my parents are watching Round Two of my First Steps.
Round One was awesome. I thrashed about, knocking things over and wreaking havoc, laughing hysterically at the chaos and moving through it like I was invincible, a gust of wind just passing through. Round Two, however, feels a bit more cautious, like perhaps some destination lies beyond each step. This time around, I am aware of what my eyes see; I consciously listen to what my ears hear; it occurs to me that I can be receptive to my surroundings, join them as a fixture rather than merely breeze past them. Now it seems the tables have turned. Everything around me is moving, taking me for a ride, thrashing me around, laughing at my unsteadiness.
I have to stop sometimes and ask myself: How am I performing in the Tadasana Challenge? Can I be still and grounded as I dig a place for myself out there in the chaos, as I tackle what it means to accept adulthood? All the 20-somethings I know seem to be struggling when it comes to finding a balance in the quest to make a living, to explore companionship, to mold one’s identity, to seek and define success. Sometimes in the company of these pressures, I yearn to turn back and run home to simpler times. Other times, I speculate about the future with such fervor that I forget where I’m standing in that moment.
With so much stimulation surrounding us, so many choices, so much forward movement, it seems to me that we’ve essentially forgotten how to just stand still. Consider your position in the Tadasana challenge. Are you sprinting forward, swaying sideways, stepping back, running away? Once upon a time, our only goal in life was to stand still. It might do us all some good to take a moment, on or off the mat, to stand in Tadasana and just check in.
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Fresh out of college and stressed about the “real world,” Julia Winston decided to try yoga as a way to chill out. In no time at all, she had fallen hard. She practiced with Sri Dharma Mittra and other inspirational teachers in New York City until her love for travel and her desire to explore Inner Self and collective consciousness led her on a yogic journey through India, Nepal, Thailand and Israel. Upon her return to the US of A, she became certified as a yoga teacher and taught in Harlem before moving back to her native Austin, Texas, where she now works as a writer, voice-over artist, yoga teacher and health outreach worker.
Julia is not alone either, check out THIS recent article from the NY Times that speaks about the current trend of “unsettledness” among 20-somethings in the US.
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this article does indeed capture the frantic nature of the first steps in adulthood. thank you!