I have just over 2,000 videos of myself upside down.
Most of them are boring. Setup. A kick. A fall. Walking back to the spot. Trying again. Somewhere in each one there's a handstand, and for the first year it usually didn't last long.
I started filming my practice in the autumn of 2024. I'd wanted to do a handstand since I was a kid, but I knew the path was long and I had no idea where to start. Then I took a headstand workshop at the Castro Room with Peter Bartesch. I came out of it more confident balancing upside down. Something clicked, and I started practicing against the wall. Not long after, I hired Rob Zent as my handstand coach, and I've been building from there. At some point I just started pressing record. I didn't plan to analyze any of it. I just kept doing it.
Recently I went back through all of it. 324 days of filmed practice, and more than 70 hours of footage, up to early August 2026. A pose model counted how long I was inverted in each clip. Out of all that footage, I was actually upside down for about thirteen and a half hours. The numbers are rough, good to a second or two. They told a story I recognized. Two words show up a lot in yoga, and they get mixed up almost as often. Discipline and devotion.
Discipline is the fire
In the yoga tradition, discipline has a couple of names. Tapas means heat, the fire of effort. Abhyasa means practice, the returning, over and over.
Patanjali puts abhyasa near the very start of the Yoga Sutras. In 1.12 he says the mind settles through practice and non-attachment, the two of them together. In 1.13 he defines practice as the effort to stay steady in that settled place. In 1.14 he says practice becomes firmly grounded when it's kept up for a long time, without interruption, and with devotion and care.
A long time. Without interruption. Those are the parts I understand in my body.
In my short kick-up clips from late 2024, I was usually up for about four seconds. Across all my kick-up sessions, the best hold of the day in my first third of sessions was around 7.5 seconds. In my last third it was about 15. Doubling a number that small doesn't sound like much. It's still the clearest improvement in the whole record.
Freestanding work was barely there at first. Through the middle of 2025 it was about 2 percent of my clips. By mid-2026 it was about one in six. My best freestanding hold in a session went from around 15 seconds to around 28. The program I train from now asks for 25. It's a smaller sample, so I hold that number loosely.
On film, discipline looks like nothing dramatic. Same patch of floor. Same kick. A little longer, most days.
Discipline has a shadow side. Tapas can harden. The will that gets you on the mat can turn into gripping. Then you're counting. Then you're proving something. I've had my share of that. There were sessions where I'd go off-program and throw in one-arm attempts or freestanding tries, just to see if today was the day. These days my ego is mostly in check. The way I keep it there is simple. I do what my coach programs, and not much else. No extra one-arms. No bonus freestanding. If it's not on the list, it waits. Once the gripping takes over, the fire stops purifying and starts burning.
Devotion is the offering
Devotion has its own names. Bhakti is the path of the heart. Ishvara pranidhana, one of Patanjali's niyamas, usually gets translated as surrender, or as dedication to something larger than yourself. It means offering the effort and letting go of what comes back.
What I love is that Patanjali keeps them in the same practice. Sutra 2.1 opens the second chapter by naming kriya yoga, yoga in action: tapas (the heat), svadhyaya (self-study), and Ishvara pranidhana (the offering), all in one line.
The Bhagavad Gita says it another way. In 2.47, Krishna tells Arjuna that his right is to the action alone, never to its fruits. Don't make the fruits your reason for acting, and don't use that as an excuse to stop acting either. In 12.2 he says the people most established in yoga are the ones who fix their minds on him and stay steadily engaged, with deep faith.
For me, devotion is what got me back on the mat in the months when the footage nearly stops. My busiest stretch was August to October 2025, filming on 27 to 31 days a month. Then in December 2025 and January 2026 I filmed on two or three days a month. What was going on? I honestly don't remember. I was already working with Rob by then. Maybe I just took a break. Maybe my wrist was bothering me. Discipline didn't carry me through that. It had gone quiet. What brought me back was closer to love for the practice itself. I'm not offering it to anyone in particular. I honestly just think it would be really cool to do this. If I'm devoted to anything, it's the goal and the practice: showing up, the floor, and the next set.
Devotion has a shadow too. You can love something and skip doing it. You can feel very spiritual about handstands and spend the evening watching other people do them. Feeling, with no follow-through, is still just feeling.
Discipline vs devotion
So here's where I've landed. Discipline is how I keep showing up. Devotion is why I come back.
Discipline with no devotion gets dry. You can hit every set and resent it, and eventually you stop. Devotion with no discipline gets scattered. You love the idea, you show up when you feel like it, and nothing settles.
Together they make sadhana. A practice you actually live inside.
My training right now lives in a Google Keep note. These days that's Miguel Santana. Before Miguel, it was Rob. Four sets of tuck, 35 seconds each. Three sets of a straight handstand in the middle of the room, 25 seconds each. Rest 90 to 120 seconds between sets. That list is pure abhyasa. It doesn't care how I feel.
The record is honest about where I'm short. My tuck holds sit around 15 to 20 seconds, against a 35-second target. Straddle is around 15 to 18, against 20 to 25. Those are the drills I'm on now. I used to read a gap like that as failure. Now I read it as the next thing to show up for.
Sutra 1.14 asks for practice over a long time, without interruption, with devotion. I've done the long time. I haven't always managed the without-interruption part. Devotion is what lets me forgive the gaps and come back anyway.
My main goal is to hold a one-arm handstand. Next to where I am now, that's a long way off. Discipline alone won't get me there. Discipline gets me through today's sets. Devotion is what keeps me showing up for years, for something I can't do yet.
If you're working on something slow
If the slow thing is a handstand, or a sitting practice, or a body that's healing, keep some kind of record. Use it to see that it's moving, and leave the grading out of it. Day to day, you can't tell.
When you fall out, notice why you're getting back up. If the only answer is “because I should,” add some love to it. If the only answer is “because I love it,” add a schedule.
The handstand doesn't care which reason you walked in with. You'll stay longer when both are there.