For those of you who follow my blog, you know that 17 days ago I decided to do 100 days of headstand--not to prove anything to anyone--but to help myself get over the small, lingering issues & emotions that I have attached to the pose over the past few years of practicing it. So, today is day 17, and I have a few updates (2 that I love, 1 that I don't love so much...).

1. Around 10:30pm last night (my bedtime!), I received this text from my Dad: "Inspired by yr blog, did my first headstand in 20 yrs y'day! More to come." Then, a few minutes later, I get a text from my brother's girlfriend, Jocelyn, that includes the picture below and says, "Thrower [my Dad] gettin rowdy."

So that's my Dad's second headstand in 20 years :) Yes, he did practice yoga a lot his his twenties, but hasn't continued practicing regularly since then (I still hope that having a yoga instructor daughter will get him back into a regular practice one of these days...). As a sidenote, that's my brother, Peter, and our dog, Ora, in the picture, and if you look close enough, you can see Jocelyn's toes :) Just a regular Wednesday night at home, doing headstands! I love it.

2. To add to the wonderfulness of this little late-night text exchange, I then got this one about 5 minutes later (again, from Jocelyn): "Peter wanted in on the action" and the picture below...

And that's my brother's first headstand EVER! My Dad told me later that he assisted him in getting into it, but still--how great is that?  Soon we'll just be a family of headstanders :)

3. While my family was smiling away and practicing glorious headstands, I couldn't do a headstand yesterday for the first time in 100 days. Why? Oh, it's just a great story...

Yesterday, I was down in our building's recycling area, hunting for cardboard boxes for our move (have I mentioned that there is NOTHING that I hate more than buying cardboard boxes? It's SO bad for the earth and SUCH a waste of money! So I have no problem hunting in the recycling area). I had compiled a stack of a few boxes on the floor, and went to pick them up before heading upstairs, but when I stood up, I smashed--and I mean smashed, as I was standing up quickly--the top of my head (the very part that you use for headstand) on a large metal protrusion coming out of the side of the dumpster. I saw starrs (hehe!), my head was spinning, and I don't think I've felt that much straight pain in my head since I was a child. It HURT. So I came upstairs slowly, convinced I had a concussion and would be calling an ambulance any minute, and iced my head for about 20 minutes. Even the icepack caused major pain, but I was convinced that I should do it because I had to teach in about 2 hours. Although I don't think I had a concussion because I went to bed last night and woke up again this morning (I'm still alive! Yay!), I do still have a dull ache in my head, and the pillow that I slept on hurt my head when I moved the wrong way, so I think it's pretty bad. Also, I have a large egg coming out of the top of my head, which is really cute. I look kind of like SpongeBob in this picture:

So yeah, you can see that you just can't do a headstand on that! No balancing on an egg. Plus, it would hurt incredibly badly. So what is a girl to do? I have to take a few days off of my 100 days, at least until my head heals. But, I've decided that I'll just make up for it by doing multiple headstands on the days following these--so once I heal, I'll do a few days of 2 or 3 headstands per day to get back on track. That way, I'll still do my 100 in 100, just in a roundabout way :)

Isn't it interesting how life can just "get in the way" of our practice? Whether it's an injury, an emotional blockage or issue, or a head banged on a dumpster (OMG what is wrong with me!?!?), you just never know how you're going to have to modify...but the great thing is--you can always modify :)

Headstand love and namaste,
Mary Catherine