The Upside Down
I recently hired a coach to help me learn how to do handstands. This has been something I have been interested in doing basically my entire life, because let’s be real, it’s badass. Not just the fact that you are standing on your hands, but what it means to be able to stand on your hands. Transparently, I did not understand all of the pieces and parts to this. The path has been highly underestimated and subsequently has brought understanding to the well-worth-it hourly rate for my coach.
I teach yoga, and have practiced since I was 5 years old. I was involved in gymnastics, tumbling and cheer growing up. While I walked away with many altered joints and ankles that never stretch quite the way they used to because of so many sprains, I was never able to master a freestanding handstand for longer than a few seconds. Also, none of the aforementioned facts meant much when it came time to grow in pursuit of balancing on my hands.
Hiring a coach to learn how to do handstands wasn't just about achieving complete badassery for me. I wanted to achieve something meaningful to me. I wanted to grow in a new way and take new form. My why? I want to go somewhere in my body and experience something new. It was about embarking on a journey of growth, resilience, and self-discovery— and through this I recognized the mirroring to the transformative process many undergo with a life or executive coach. The path to mastering a handstand, much like navigating life's challenges or striving towards professional excellence, involves dedication, patience, a systematic approach, and, for me, a partnership built on trust.
Starting my journey, I believed my background in yoga and gymnastics would make mastering a handstand straightforward. Yet, my coach quickly dismantled this notion, starting our sessions with wrist conditioning. Wrist conditioning..? Yes, wrist conditioning. Lo and behold, only three minutes into the wrist work, my forearms and hands trembled.. and this was a 60 minute coaching session. There was work to do. We explored stretches, drills, weight distribution into the hands and fingers, alignment and mobility of the shoulders, positioning of the hips, and, to my surprise, last on the list was the role the feet and legs play in a handstand (thought like a typical foot-stander). This unexpected beginning underscored a powerful lesson: achieving mastery often requires us to strengthen foundational skills we may overlook. Similarly, in life coaching or executive coaching, we begin by fortifying the core aspects of our being or organization. It’s about laying down the essential groundwork—be it emotional resilience, leadership skills, or strategic thinking—before reaching for the heights.
Just as the drills and conditioning have been pivotal for handstand exploration and stability, so is the process of carving out time to strengthen our skills and objectives in personal and professional growth. Conditioning in the context of coaching often means challenging our existing beliefs and values, building intimacy without our ego, expanding our skill set, and consistently practicing new behaviors. My initial belief was that my core needed to be stronger to stabilize myself while upside down. The truth was I needed to build strength, endurance, and mobility in areas of my body I have overlooked. I needed to be distributing my weight into my hands with intention, really leveraging my pointer fingers and thumbs as opposed to just my palms. Leading with my hips and not my feet and focusing where my power was coming from and where I could send it from a place of integrity. This phase of conditioning is crucial for growth, demanding regular practice, commitment, and, importantly, patience with oneself.
Accountability plays a significant role in our journey towards any goal. In my handstand training, the trust and rapport I have and continue to build with my coach keeps me showing up, even when progress seems slow or at times, impossible. I am human, too. I have a life that demands much and delivers little in the way of respite unless I demand and curate it. Having a human that offers their perspective and expertise, reminding me that this journey is truly mine and precisely what I desire, even when obstacles seemingly crowd the path ahead and some days seem insurmountable, has been transformative. She is coaching my mind just as much as she is coaching my body. The trust I have with her is akin to the relationship between a client and their life or executive coach—a partnership that fosters accountability, encourages resilience through setbacks, and celebrates each small victory on the path to the larger goal.
The journey to mastering a handstand, like any significant growth journey, is fraught with tumbles, bumps, and bruises. These setbacks are not indicators of failure but are, instead, integral parts of the learning process. They teach us about our limits, how to push beyond them safely, and most importantly, how to rise after a fall. You don’t see toddlers out there throwing in the towel after they fall time and time again on the journey to walking. Somewhere, society has hardened us to have less grace and patience with ourselves as we learn and master new things. It’s time to scrap that. The resilience built through overcoming these obstacles is what ultimately leads to achieving our goals with integrity.
Mastering a handstand is not just about the physical act of standing on one's hands; it's a testament to the journey undergone—the discipline, the failures, the learnings, and the growth. To be able to stand on ones hands for any amount of time, there is so much attention and commitment required in each millisecond of activation. To do this, it is quite literally impossible to be thinking of a single other thing. In this day and age, it is a gift to find something that requires so much of me to remain subtly still and mentally and physically engaged for 15-60 seconds, and it is a damn gift. What I thought would be a badass accomplishment turned out to be the most gracious and true gift of mediation. It's a powerful metaphor for achieving any goal in life or within a leadership context. Each step, no matter how seemingly small or foundational, contributes to the eventual success.
My handstand journey has been a profound reminder and teacher in both my personal and my professional life. It has reminded me of the importance of starting with the basics, committing to regular practice, maintaining accountability, embracing setbacks, and progressing towards a goal with integrity as opposed to cutting corners. These lessons are universal, applying not only to the pursuit of physical balance and strength but also to personal development and effective leadership. Just as mastering a handstand, growing as an individual or leader is about finding balance—between strength and flexibility, effort and ease, falling and rising. And in this balance, we find our true power.
