Why Every Businessperson should do Headstands Daily
This morning, I turned my whole world upside down.
I do it every morning, as a matter of habit. What fun is the world right-side up? And more importantly, how can we ever learn without shaking up our settled snow-globes?
Turning things on their heads inherently frightens us. We have pre-constructed our worlds to see them one way, carefully stacked and architected, as if we had set up the pieces of our lives in a tenuous Jenga tower, ready to tumble.
The reality is that those pieces came together by happenstance and random luck to begin with — there is no structure that must be maintained and followed.
By a daily prescription of upside-downing (or downside-upping) through headstand practice, we can remind ourselves of the flexibility of life, and learn how to truly find balance in our lives, both personal and professional.
Finding Balance
Not only do headstands teach us to turn our physical and metaphorical worlds on their heads, they also teach us about what true balance feels like.
Spoiler alert for those who have not yet found true balance: it does not feel comfortable. At least not at first.
When you first start doing headstand, you’ll fluctuate with your feet an inch or a centimeter off either side of balance, and you’ll feel the comforting engagement of your trapezoids, your abs, your hamstrings pulling against that misbalance to even out gravity and hold you up.
There is a sense of security in this struggle. You know where you stand (headstand in this case); through the tension you are reminded that you still control your reality.
And then… you find the sweet spot, the place perfectly stacked above your hips, your shoulder, your support system where you are floating in perfect balance through architecture alone, no muscular engagement needed. And instead of feeling sweet relief in this sense of floating, it is terrifying.
But it means you are in perfect balance.
It is the same in our work life — we believe that we need to feel the tension to know that we are doing well, moving forward, building something. We add hours onto the end of our days and onto our weekend, we vent to friends about “how stressful this project is” how “high pressure” the our work is.
But in reality, we cling to our work “pressure” like a security blanket. Without it, we feel ourselves floating, and when we first find balance we may believe that we have drifted off, stagnated, that we don’t believe we’re making “enough” progress if we’re not feeling either pushed or pulled or gripped.
The reality is, balance is the most powerful state a human can achieve.
When the great yoga gurus find balance in their headstands, they unlock seemingly superhuman gifts in their physical and mental capacities. Many yogis of yore have famously spent 12 hours or more in headstands, emerging with mental clarity and deepened peace.
The great sages of the business world float through their work, lightly, tension free, yet somehow transform everything they touch instantaneously. Think about the great CEOs and business leaders you admire: have you ever seen them flustered? Have you ever heard them gripe about how stressed they are at work?
When you have been out of balance, was that a time when you were accomplishing the most? Or was it, in fact, a time when your tensions pushed and pulled against each other, giving you the sense that you were alive, reminding you that you were working, but really not moving forward as fast as you could?
Try it. Try it both in your physical body and in your work, so each can learn from the other.
I promise it will be uncomfortable. I promise you will not like it at first. I promise that you will doubt everything that is written here.
And then one day you’ll float. And you’ll sink deeply into the floating. And you will reach accomplishments you never dreamed of.
Sometimes you all you have to do is let go of gravity if you really want to soar.
