Yes, I can fail!

First there was the pain in the neck. I tried the `dolphin stretch` at home. The lesson was not to be impatient. Not to do anything but lying on your back or eating or both after a day of 10 hours of yoga and other courses.
Then there was the shoulderache. Because of sirsasana. The headstand. I could do step 5 so why not step 6, both legs up. My shoulder revolted and didn`t let me do any headstand for four days. Again, the lesson was not to hurry.
Then, in the third week the left hipmuscle wouldn`t co-operate anymore with the surrounding parts. Now I couldn`t do anything anymore. Never again. My left leg would be stiff for the rest of my life, my right leg pointlessly flexible. No Nepal or Himalaya for me. Physically burnt out before the age of thirty...Tears, despair, anger. The drama increases in a course like this.
And then Bharat, our teacher, tells me that physical pain is a sign of progress and with one sentence he does what I thought would take at least three years : he almost immediately cures the hipmuscle and my mood.
Like the teacher in the vipassanacenter who asked me if I was maybe afraid when I told him I have been walking around with numb legs for two days. And almost immediately there was life in them again.
It`s all in the mind. That`s a sentence. But I finally discovered it`s a true sentence.
What`s happening with me? As if there are all kinds of deeprooted fears in the form of burning feet, numb legs or teared hipmuscles coming to the surface and so running away because they`re not welcome in my body anymore.
Stress takes revenge on the body. That`s also a sentence. But that it can come from such unconscious depths, I didn`t know.
"It means you`re progressing", he tells me.
"First the neck, then the shoulder, now the leg. But the neckpain is gone, no?" Yes.
"And the shoulder, gone, no?" Yes
And the leg will also be gone, since I know the cause.
My body is only asking me friendly but firmly to listen to it. Otherwise there will be a strike again. Somewhere. In one part or another.
As soon as I`m trying to show off what this body of mine has learned the past few weeks, or when it wants to become as good as Shiva`s, the 23-year old chinese superhuman being who can fold herself in two, who is on the mat next to me, there`s the strike again.
Stay on your own mat seems to be the moral of the story.

The only thing left to learn is to fail.
Those moments when I found myself in rabbitpose (it`s a real asana, you can look it up)on my mat, while the rest of the class was standing on his head, those were the most satisfying. Yes I can. I can fail and I don`t mind.

Not wanting everything, that`s what I want.