I took up writing and yoga at around the same time. In many ways the paths have been similar. I find that both of them route me in my life, make me a calmer, nicer person. Both of them demand commitment and humility and have so many levels of competency, that I could spend many lifetimes attempting to be any good. Both of them make me want to do better, to be better.
Such was my excitement and enthusiasm when I started practising yoga (not to mention degree of delusion) that to begin with I thought that the attention I received from the instructors was due to my natural ability. It was only when I visited a new studio after about a year of practising and was horrified when I caught sight of myself in a mirror that I realised that whilst on the inside I might be a warrior, with the person I was practising for balancing delicately on the end of my outstretched finger; on the outside my posture still sucked, my hips resolutely refused to open and I still couldn’t balance on one leg.
Reality checks are good. They pull us back into the present when we’re rushing off another direction altogether. I’ve recently had my fourth writing ‘reality check’, or agent’s rejection letter for my novel. After three years of designing and reigning supreme in my own private universe, where I was God and my characters did as I said (well, for some of the time at least), it’s very grounding. And I’m in good company, I know, rejection is all part of being a writer, you’ve got to be able to deal it, in bucketloads. All of that I know in my head. But sometimes I feel slightly hysterical at just how improbable it is that I’ll ever get published – when one considers how many unsolicited manuscripts land on agents’ slush piles each week, what are the chances that someone is even going to pick up mine, let alone read it, like it and ask to see the rest of it? I don’t do maths, but I reckon you’re more likely to win the lottery.
My greatest fear in yoga is the headstand. I’m terrified of falling, I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to be able to balance upside down. It’s a hangover from being a severely uncoordinated child. So whilst everyone else in the class gets on with getting upside-down, I develop instant lower back pain or some other lame excuse. Recently my instructor berated me for my feebleness. ‘Your body doesn’t have a problem with headstands, you’re strong, you’re perfectly able to do them,’ she said, ‘It’s all in your mind.’
As with most life-changing revelations, it’s perfectly obvious. The fear of falling is so much worse than falling; the real feeling of failure lies in not trying, not in getting it wrong. The only way in which I would ever be a failure as a writer is if I walked away from it.
Back to the mat then, back to the page.
Rosie Rowell 