Once I got over my incredulity that I too could kick up into handstand at the wall, I hit what has probably been an 8 year plateau in the pose. My attitude towards handstand since that time has pretty much been as a strength builder. Whenever the teacher requests a handstand, I dutifully comply, but when other folks in my class start walking across the room on their hands, I tell myself that Adho Mukha Vrksasana is "not really my pose." For the last couple of year's I've been working on using a bunny hop to get up instead of the one legged approach. It's much harder for me, somehow, so I keep plugging away at it. I'm able to hop my hips over my head only about 1 out of 3 times, so it keeps me humble.
Then a couple of weeks ago in class we practiced a partner pose going into handstand from kind of a double-dog position, with a third classmate spotting the handstander from behind. I questioned the pedagogical usefulness of this, but just as I was musing critically our teacher said "I think it's good just to play around in handstand, you know?"
So the next time I was in the lake with my son and his friends, I thought maybe I should do some handstands in the water like I used to do when I was a little girl. I assure you I was the only adult in the lake doing handstands. I felt a little foolish, but it's just as fun now as it was when I was eight.
Then yesterday in class, I hopped up into a perfectly balanced handstand before I even knew what had hit me. Some muscle memory of fearlessly shooting my legs up through the water had stayed with me. I needed that lesson- that sometimes more progress is made by just playing around than by all the dutiful hard work in the world.
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