First, I have to thank everyone for the flood of birthday wishes.
It’s always meaningful to hear from people reading these newsletters but especially during joyous or difficult times.
(And last week was a potent mixture of both.)
Second, although I shared a few photos from my drop back experience, I realize I forgot to include something important in the post.
Namely, a link to the essay I was asked to write for an anthology years ago that offers more about my history and views on the practice HERE.
This, however, is the key takeaway:
I love my ritual not only because it moves me past my fears but also because it confronts our universal preconceptions.
It challenges one of our most basic premises, as much a given as entropy and inertia.
Namely, that the passage of time = decline.
To recap: each year, I do one more of these falling back into a wheel and springing back up to stand.
To quote my own essay:
“Rather than going easier on yourself, quietly into that good night, every year you raise the bar one notch higher. Indeed, the older you are, the more opportunities you’ve had to develop inner resources, the more chances to trust that you can fall backward open-hearted and catch yourself. I prove to myself that I am, in fact, getting more flexible, and more importantly, more fearless with every year.”
Thus this practice of doing just one more backbend a year is a subtle (perhaps make that major) act of defiance to conventional beliefs.
It’s an athletic “F__ You” to the concept of inevitable decline and the limits we set for ourselves.
These are truths we often take unquestioned, ones that are far more arbitrary than we think.
Indeed, throughout history, people have continuously believed in “carved in stone” limits that were simply not true.
I have two favorite examples of this, both around our limited beliefs regarding speed.
The first centers around the many misconceptions and fears people had about the limits of train travel in the 19th century.
Since no one had ever really traveled faster than about 40 mph during a short burst on a galloping thoroughbred, people were quite concerned and suspicious about what faster, and much longer trips, taken on a train might mean.
Many prominent scientists of the time insisted that the human body simply couldn’t survive that kind of intensity, that people’s brains would be terribly rattled.
It was speculated that passengers would be driven mad and jump off trains in moments of speed-induced insanity.
Obviously, this was not true.
Cruising speeds on 747s planes are now about 570 miles per hour––over ten times that dreaded, “impossible” speed barrier.
As a second, and perhaps even more powerful example, people for centuries believed that the human body was simply not capable of running a 4-minute mile.
It was a “fact” that this was just not possible.
In the 1940s, however, someone got very close at 4 minutes and 1 second.
That record stood for nine years.
And then in 1954, Roger Bannister broke that record by shaving 2 seconds off that time. The barrier had been broken…and everything changed.
Barely two months later, two other runners did the same.
Now over 1,400 people have achieved this, and the record is more than 17 seconds less than Bannister’s barrier-breaking speed.
What’s significant about these two stories?
In both of them, people (falsely) defined limits that were simply not accurate.
And once those false limits were broken, once a new sense of what was POSSIBLE arose, entirely new levels of achievement almost instantly became normal.
My dropping back is my own statement against traditional limits.
It’s something I was nowhere near doing at 22 (the traditional peak of a man’s physical endurance) or 30 (the age at which male muscle mass is predicted to decline.)
In fact, it was almost a decade later that I began the practice in defiance of what my own limits should have been.
And while every year it challenges me on multiple physical and emotional levels, most importantly it’s also transforming my inner beliefs.
There’s great joy in that for, as Walt Disney said:
“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”
Oddly, we do seem to acknowledge this inverse truth––that we can become stronger rather than weaker over time––only in the magical / fantasy realms.
The oldest wizard or vampire is always the most powerful, the one you really don’t want to mess with.
(And perhaps, it’s a small jump in real life to feeling that way about my seasoned accountant and my attorneys, knowing they’ve pretty much seen everything.)
In fact, it’s only at the Apple Store’s Genius Bar where I want the youngest possible person to help me out and sometimes, not even then.
Anyway, my goal in writing this is to invite you to soften, perhaps even dissolve any conventional limits you’ve been given.
Like the “impossibility” of the 4-minute mile or the dangers of traveling faster than 40 m.p.h., they may, in fact, not be true at all.
As we’ve seen those limiting beliefs were challenged and overcome, the seemingly impossible becomes not only possible but within common reach.
As usual, perhaps Rumi said it best 750 years ago:
Don’t be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth.
You certainly don’t have to express this through bravura yoga gymnastics or breaking a world record.
Nonetheless, I wish this for you as you navigate the challenges of your life:
Defy convention when it suits you.
Set your own speed limits. And..
Unfold Your Own Myth.
Namaste For Now…
P.S. Some of this writing was inspired by my DailyOm Courses. Feel free to check my favorites out HERE.
