Let’s flip some dogs
If you’ve been to a few studio classes then you’ve probably seen this. You may have been one of those graceful people who can reverse a pose without crashing back to your mat. Or maybe you were like me and just watched in awe for that first month as the class was told to “flip your dog” or go into “wild thing.”
First of all I’d just like to say that those two names for poses are battling it out right now for “greatest yoga pose name ever.” Only problem for me is that getting from downward dog to wild thing would just make me look wildly uncoordinated. Until a couple weeks ago. I went for it. I trusted my leg and my wimpy wrists to support me all the way from being upside-down to downside-up. And it worked! Took a solid month of nerves, half-arsed attempts, and lots of falling. I think the trick to this is a few failures and a sudden burst of reckless confidence to make things happen in yoga. Not unlike making crow pose happen for my awesome .5 seconds. So to my friends tempted to give it up because sometimes these things seem impossible, well, give it another month, embrace that inner reckless abandon, and if it still just isn’t gonna happen I guess we’ll always have savasana. Ahhh sweet happy place.
But back to the matter at hand and my shameless love for my puppy, I give you proof that a downward dog and a Wild Thing can exist harmoniously:
A cat called Wild Thing and my dog, Tallulah (she’s laying down so I figure it counts as a downward dog).
