Why do we fall? So that we rise again.

Two days ago I did a 60-minute cross-country walk in the vicinity of Our Native Village, an eco resort on the outskirts of Bangalore. I couldn’t stop grinning and telling about it to anyone who would listen to me. I was so excited about this feat that I stood up, paced the room and walked some more any opportunity I had. In itself it’s not a big deal – walking cross-country for an hour. But for me it was, because I hadn’t stepped out of my house except to get into a vehicle and be chauffeured around for the better part of a whole year. 

I did not walk to any of my customary haunts such as the supermarket round the corner, the hole- in- the-wall organic store that was more a treasure hunt than shopping spree, not the state horticultural co-op 20 minutes away, or my preferred boutique for endless fittings. At 59 I was given the verdict of an arthritic knee by the friendly neighbourhood orthopaedic and told to just take painkillers if the pain became unbearable or else try some herbal supplements that may strengthen the muscles around the knee. And that’s when I met specialist in human movement Dr. Badrinath Rao, founder of Activity Heals. 

Every day of Dr Badrinath’s boot-camp regimen, whether at home or in his clinic, is sheer agony and sheer magic all at the same time. The magic is in the incrementally increasing flexibility, reduction in pain and freedom of movement that left me wondering at how absolutely self-willed both damage and recovery of human physiology can be.

About three weeks ago I fell down really hard on my butt. It wasn’t an accidental fall like slipping on a slick floor. This was at Badri’s clinic while learning to balance on what goes by the innocuous name of ‘half rubber foam’ - a plank with a curved bottom about eight inches wide and two and a half feet in length. Incidentally, Badri, short for Dr Badrinath Rao, is known by many names such as Hitler among his loyal band of clients. He is economical with his words - beginning every session with a caveat: No blood on my studio floor – it’s been freshly washed. But he’s right there when you teeter and imagine you’re going to come down in at least a million splinters. He puts you back on your feet with the least disruption.

In retrospect, my fall that day happened because I lost focus for just a split second, over-confident about walking the half rubber foam and I fell backwards. I came close to a black out, not wanting to face the reality of an out-of-commission back having regained pain-free posture after one long year. Badri asked me to lie flat on my back, raise my thighs to slip a medicine ball underneath in order to ease the impacted muscles.

When I got my breath back I asked Badri plaintively how I would cope with the slew of house-guests coming over for a family function that same week. He said ‘what’s wrong with you, you haven’t broken anything; just get up and walk around, you’ll be fine’. To my repeated queries for pain medication and pain- relief patches he finally erupted: ‘I know an agent in Hollywood, maybe you should call him, they’re looking for a drama queen.’  

Regardless, I rested my back, applied a pain-relief patch and went for my pool walk the next day as usual. The guests came, had a good time and no one commented on the strong mentholated smell of my patched-up back. In two weeks’ time I was myself as before the fall. There are two learnings from this for me: a fall is a good thing for the body, mind and spirit. Especially, if you learn the technique of how to fall in the eventuality that it will happen again. And all my experience with elders in the family tells me it will. 

Apparently, young people fall forwards and they use their hands and palms to break their fall. But older people fall backwards, mostly because they are not quick to regain balance. By becoming aware of this small fact your body may actually stow this away in memory and act on it in an emergency. Secondly, a minor fall never killed anybody or broke any bones, unless you are over 80 or in the throes of osteoporosis.

Interestingly, The New York Times recently carried an article titled: ‘Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up’.  At campuses across the US, educationists are inculcating ‘resilience is key’ in their future generations. To quote from the NYT: “What we’re trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning, it’s a feature,” said Rachel Simmons, a leadership development specialist in Smith College, ... a failure Czar on campus. ... “There is this kind of expectation on students at a lot of these schools to be succeeding on every level: academically, socially, romantically in our family lives, in our friendships,” said Emily Hoeven a recent graduate... The University of California has what it calls a head of Student Resilience on staff. While at Davidson College, ...there is a so-called failure fund ... for students to pursue a creative endeavour, with no requirements that the idea would be viable or work.”

What University students live through the duration of their degree terms is a capsulated form of what adults live through the rest of their lives. But having never interacted with a ‘resilience specialist’ in our life we just beat ourselves up for every minor and major failure instead of learning from our mistakes and leaning into failure. And that’s why it was so refreshing to read Anna Chandy’s book Battles in the Mind launched recently by Penguin.

Anna Chandy, one of the top practising Transactional Analysts and co-founder of The Live Love Laugh Foundation (TLLLF), has detailed every dark corner of life that stands in stark contrast to the illuminating work she does in mental health. At one point in her book she says: “I had been the perfect married woman, the pleasant cousin, and the quiet relative for most of my life because I was afraid that if I weren’t, the people closest to me would cut me off. I was afraid of rejection. Perhaps it was a pattern that I couldn’t shake off. Patterns, I knew from my psychological study, have tissue memory. They are so deeply embedded in our tissue, on a somatic level, that they can cause physical sensations. My body kept me in a pattern of being pliant because that pattern was familiar. I could not escape it.

“And yet I did.

“I strengthened my resolve to break away from my pattern, and to accept rejection. I had already broken away from my expected roles – social- and familial – knowing that it would wreak vengeance on my life; that I would be excluded, and that I would feel hurt. I knew that I would no longer be the popular woman whom everyone liked. Yet I also knew that it was not me they liked, but someone they could walk over. I was not that person anymore.

“It took me several years of psychological work on myself and much introspection to shed my super sensitivity, my thin skin, my inability to take rejection. I can finally deliver a ‘no’ and I can take a ‘no’. ..

“No one can make me feel small any more. At five feet three, I am one of the tallest, strongest people I know.”

But I lied earlier when I spoke of the fall in Badri’s studio. Because it wasn’t the first nor the only fall I have taken in recent times. When my father passed away just over a year ago I spiralled into a free fall inviting health issues and emotional isolation that made my life unrecognisable to me. In the time that I have taken to heal my inner self I have been able to acknowledge some truths about myself and the rest of the world. Mainly that it’s a place where you are likely to fall - into traps, into holes, into misgivings, into mistrials, mistakes... And usually there’s always someone holding out a cushion for you – it could be someone you know, someone you have never met, your own self or Faith. It helps to be able to trust that as hard as you may fall it is inevitable that you will bounce back. So yes, bring it on life... I think I’ll just create a ‘failure fund’ for myself and embrace all the failures and success with equal glee.

Thank you Badrinath Rao and thank you Anna Chandy; you’ve broken falls of more people than you will ever know. May your tribe increase.