When I lived in Singapore (ten years ago) I found it very difficult coping with the extreme humidity. Even after the two years prior spent in Jakarta did not prepare me for it. It was so bad all normal outdoor activity, including sitting or slow walking, caused the body to be completely covered in sweat.

It was a light, clean sweat, but a sweat nevertheless. At first I felt so uncomfortable with it my normal life became curtailed to the degree I started to become unhappy. I am not an indoors person, and too much time spent inside causes a slow decline of mood and optimism.

If I wanted a happy and fulfilling life I had no options but to change my perspective. I made myself become comfortable with my body being wet all over, no matter what I was doing, and more importantly, what I was wearing. I had to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, until it was no longer uncomfortable to me.

If l have learned anything it’s that life is pretty much a constant scramble to cope with undesirable and unexpected conditions and events. Life continually throws things up at us that catch us off guard, making us feel sad, lonely, angry, even bitter or depressed.

But most of our unhappiness lies in our inability to accept the situation. Thwarted expectations, disappointments, betrayals, and failures shake us up, often to our very core. They cause us to look at things differently and they throw new light on our life and our situation. These difficult experiences cause us to question everything and, if we are wise, make the necessary adjustments and alterations to reinstate our peace and equilibrium.

Interestingly, American yoga teacher Tara Stiles says inverted poses like the shoulder stand have the effect, like failure and disappointment, of turning everything upside down, reversing the action of gravity on our body. This sort of physical shaking up has a very real and positive effect, allowing us to see our life and problems in a new light, and even reducing anxiety and stress as well as increasing self-confidence, mental power and concentration, and for those who care, stimulating the chakras.

For this reason she calls the shoulder stand the super pose. She says if we regularly spend time inverted in a shoulder stand all sorts of good things will happen, to our bodies and our minds and emotions.

We have to find the mental and emotional strategies that give us the flexibility and acceptance we need to dodge and weave the cannonballs of pain and heartache life hurls at us. Shoulder stands seem like a good start.

Eileen McBride
Eileen McBride is the author of Love Equals Power 2, a spiritual seeker and teacher. This article was published on April 14, 2012.