It's time to GROW!

Spring always surprises me.  I think I am over-prepared for the “long winter” everyone keeps talking about, so come early March, when the buds start to form, I’m thinking, “these flowers are ‘cray.’  It’s still winter for another couple months.”  But thankfully, I’m wrong, and the daffodils and hyacinth are soon blooming all over the place, and there is still sunlight at 7pm (with a little help from daylight savings time), and it’s Spring. 

Spring is many a yoga teacher’s favorite time of year, because it’s easy to talk about as a metaphor for your life and practice.  A great time to remind people of their own opportunities for change.  A time to be reborn (note: this is very different from un-die, which is what Jesus did).  I am fully on the “let’s all burst into beautiful flowers this spring” train.  In fact, Spring makes a lot more sense to me as a time to make a change in yourself than New Years.  New Years resolutions are based on a bizarre calendar system that has little to do with anything besides keeping track of what days you need to go to work.  January doesn’t feel like a good time to change; it’s a time to hunker down.  Perhaps you could get away with creating some discipline in something in January, but when it comes to sweeping, growing-type changes, January seems like it’s working against you.

But it’s Spring now, let’s grow!   Here’s how.

Firstly, you must recognize that you can change.  I think to many people, including myself, this is actually the biggest barrier to change.  We say that we want to be different, and we may even say that we know we can be different, but we don’t really truly open our hearts to believing it.  I feel that a very similar problem keeps a lot of people from really knowing love, fyi.   Try this: when you see all the new flowers coming up from the ground, strong and alive after a winter of being half-dead and asleep—and maybe your personal winter of sleep has been very long—recognize that if that little plant can do it, you definitely can.  You have more brains than a plant.  You know how to walk and sing and stuff, so you can def do what a plant can!  (Except for making your own food from the sun, they win there).

Continue to practice recognizing the fact you can change until you actually believe it and feel it.  Hints that you are really feeling it: a smile spreads across your face, you feel like anything is possible, walking feels lighter and more fun, you look more beautiful to yourself in the mirror, you WANT to do those things that you have always said you were going to do RIGHT NOW.  Christians like to call this feeling “Jesus’s love” but I think of it more as seeing clearly.*  If you have truly reached this stage, the actual changing will be much easier.  For instance, you might not desperately crave the sugar you have been trying to eat less of, or you might be inspired to draw a picture instead of watch TV. 

Now the trick is to find this feeling as much as possible. If you have found it once, you can definitely find it again, but it may take some practice.  While you are working on changing, whether you are trying to change something physical, emotional, or otherwise life-related, keep trusting that you can.  I choose to remind myself that “I can actually be different” and “my life can be better” and “I can have everything I dream of for myself” often.  I tend to forget these things, and when I do, everything seems harder.  When things feel hard, I tend to not do them.  So remember change is easy!  Just let it happen. Don’t be fooled into thinking that “let” is a passive thing here.  You must actively create a belief that change can happen, and once you do, the rest will be a lot easier. 

*Yoga Lesson: Seeing clearly could be considered the ultimate goal of yoga.  The meditation and lifestyle practices of yoga are meant to help you see truthfully.  It is taught that one’s perceptions are clouded by avidya or obstacles, which keep us from “clear understanding”.  This includes ego, attachment, rejection, and fear.  The vritti are the movements of the mind, or the things the mind does besides seeing clearly.  The teachings of yoga include many tools that we can use to work to get past all of these things and be in a state of clarity (sattra). 

Perfection

I found out last weekend in training that I have an "excessive" carrying angle in my elbow.  This isn't a disease or problem, it's kind of more like people who can hyperextend their elbows, its just sort of weird.  Here's what I'm talking about:   I'm more like the one on the right.  Also when I was in 9th grade, I was a cheerleader, (look at you, thinking you know me) and was learning how to pick girls up  when something happened to my shoulder.  It didn't fully dislocate, but it hurt bad enough to make me cry, and from then on I had to be the back spotter (lame :P), but I'm pretty sure my shoulder doesn't move in my socket correctly now, and cheerleading might be to blame.  Yes, that's right, I am the girl who got hurt cheerleading, so that all cheerleaders could talk about how dangerous their sport really is.  (Ha. ha.  I don't think it's a sport, don't worry, neither is cross country.)

SO anyways...  I am constantly thinking about my stupid shoulder in yoga.  It pops when I try to put it in the "safe" position, where it wraps forward.  It is much easier and more comfortable to "sink" into my shoulder joint.  Every single time I raise my arms about my head, whether for utthita hastasana in tadasana or downward facing dog, I have to consciously re-position my shoulder.  Sometimes when listening to a teacher's cue's I just can't do it.  My right shoulder can "wrap" just fine, but my left one won't budge.  Or they say to spin my biceps to face each other, and I AM but really its just my carrying angle that makes it super easy for my biceps to be where they are supposed to while my shoulders are still not where they are supposed to be.  It's frustrating.  I thought if I did yoga enough it would fix itself.  The joint would figure it out and stop popping; my muscles would get stronger and I'd look perfect by now; but so far... nope.  My postures have improved and my arms are stronger, but my shoulder is still something I have to think about and work on.  And as I was settling into my savasana after a pretty good class on Tuesday I thought to myself "Why is my shoulder such a problem.  I just want to be able to be perfect."

Cue the Tibetan bowls, ding, ding ding!  DUH!  It's okay to be imperfect.  My shoulder is imperfect because we have imperfections.  I am a human being.   I have to do yoga and work with my postures as best I can with what I am given.  I cannot will my body to be a perfect yoga body and come into every posture with beauty and ease.  And that's fine.

That's actually the whole freaking point.  That whatever I can do, whatever work it takes, whatever the posture that is right for me looks like, that is MY perfect intended posture in that moment.  Maybe it will change over time.  Maybe it won't.  It's fine.  Yoga teaches us to acknowledge and accept our imperfections.  Physical and otherwise.  It makes no more sense for me to be frustrated with my wonky shoulder than it does to pout and hate myself over the fact I sometimes (okay, often) put my foot in my mouth.  We are all imperfect and that won't change (well, maybe you can be a buddha one day... idk).  We can get better and work hard with all our imperfections, but no changes will ever come if we aren't first okay with having them.  My shoulder forces me to focus and work harder, not to frustrate me and make me feel inferior, but to remind me to make peace with myself, exactly as I am.

So I urge you to remind yourself often, that you are okay just as you are.  That if you never changed or improved, you would still be "perfect." I don't mean just fine or acceptable.  You are in fact, a perfect and complete being right now, exactly as you are.


Namaste.