Forgetting How to Fall

In an effort to learn a new skill and remain physically active, I’ve started taking adult figure skating lessons. Each week, five women and our coach take the ice and practice our basic skills. This week, we were practicing backward crossovers. We are all ringing a blue circle in the ice, focusing intently on moving our bodies in the proper way. Our bodies are hunched up, with our shoulders elevated and our fingers splayed wide, looking something like the zombies from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.

Our furrowed brows and pursed lips show how hard we are trying… how hard we are trying not to fall. This strikes me as being in stark contrast with how my daughter and her friends are on the ice. In fact, it is not uncommon for a figure skater to fall 10 times in a 30-minute period. That is how they learn to execute the skills correctly, and ultimately how they learn not to fall.

As adults, many of us have forgotten how to fall. Why? It is likely a combination of ego and the fear of the physical pain that comes with falling. So we try desperately not to fall… moving our bodies and brains to ridiculous limits, simply not to look embarrassed. And then we stop trying new things.

In our careers, we are often looking to avoid situations in which we might fall. So we come up with excuses — I’m too busy, I forgot, I already now how to do it. Or, if we do fall, it was because the ice was bumpy, or that other guy got in our way, or we were distracted by all of the other things that were on our mind at the time.

If you watch a child fall while skating, they spring right back up and do exactly the same thing again, this time working harder not to fall, or even asking a coach how to improve their technique to limit the chance of falling. And guess what, they fall less and less until they’ve mastered the skill.

So I ask you to try to fall this week — either physically or metaphorically. Try something that intrigues you, something that you’re not yet good at, and discover the gift of falling.