World Turned Upside-Down

Even since Britt got me hooked on yoga, I’ve been spending a lot more time upside-down than I used to. Yoga is big on “inversions”, postures like headstands, handstands, and shoulderstands that get your feet up and head down. But that’s not all. Many of the basic poses – the bends and bridges, the triangles and twists, even the omnipresent down dog – involve putting your head lower than your hips.

If you ask, many yoga instructors and enthusiasts will tell you that getting upside-down is good for you. They claim it improves blood flood, helps the lymphatic system, and decreases stress. It increases upper body and core strength, they say, and takes pressure off the diaphragm and lower back.

There doesn’t seem to be much science to either back or disprove these benefits, though I can vouch for the upper body workout part. In contrast, there’s pretty strong evidence of the risks involved with inversions among people with glaucoma, high blood pressure, or congestive heart failure. Also, if you are prone to vertigo or inner ear problems, as I am, you have to take it easy and build up your tolerance over time. If you hang upside-down too long, the science is clear. Too much blood pools in your brain, and you die.

Whether literally or figuratively, many people recommend turning yourself (or your world) upside-down every once in a while to get a new perspective on things. In yoga, that generally has to do with clearing your mind of clutter, refocusing, and getting your mind and body more in balance.

In the wider world it can mean rethinking previously held notions.

Malcolm Gladwell has a Ted Talk and series of lecture tours based on his most recent and best-selling book, David and Goliath, where he argues, “We are never more alive than when things get turned upside-down.” Much of what he describes in the book is about challenging common viewpoints by inverting widely held assumptions. As he turns certain arguments on their heads, he tries to reveal their flaws or, conversely, the hidden strengths lying beneath the side we usually see.

Moving from the northern to southern hemisphere, as we have, turns lots of things on their heads. Summer is winter. The north-facing side is sunniest. The moon is reversed – or for those of us living near the equator looks like a boat instead of a crescent. Because of the way most modern maps are drawn, we think of the southern hemisphere as being on the bottom half of the world. And I confess there are days when it does feel like we are walking upside-down.

Long before Malcolm Gladwells’ books, there was an Argentinian cartoon character called Mafalda, created by “Quino” Lavado, who became very famous in the Spanish-speaking world for her way of innocently re-examining common views, stereotypes, and politics. In one series of panels, she explains to a friend that it is because the southern countries live upside-down that they are less developed than the northern ones – as it causes all their ideas to fall out.

With Mafalda in Buenos Aires

There are different groups and thinkers and artists who suggest that flipping world maps everywhere would be a way to break old thought patterns – including the notion of who’s on top. Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1874-1949) was an avant-garde Uruguayan artist, who wanted to turn Eurocentric art traditions, including their elitist tendencies, on their heads. Along with creating a style he called constructive universalism, meant to be accessible to everyone, he worked to promote Uruguayan and South American art and artists. His own work features geometric images of towns, common objects, and characteristic people. Among the most famous, however, is an inverted map of South America, where it is the continent’s southernmost point that gets the top billing.

América Invertida, Joaquin Torres Garcia.

For many people, having their world turned upside-down comes as a result of a dramatic or traumatic change in their lives.

For us, it has come more often through choices – and a deliberate sense of curiosity and adventure. I may never fully master the acrobatic inversions of yoga. But my life has indeed become richer and broader from turning it upside-down from time to time.