Let's Be Real, Not Perfect
(Photo by Conscious Design on Unsplash)
“You look tired” a yoga student told me just before class earlier this week.
I’d been through an unexpectedly stressful week prior, then I’d had 18 hours of online teacher training over the weekend. I’d subbed an extra class the day before. I’d done the family laundry, grocery shopping, and cooking that day too. Oh and I didn’t sleep well the night before. So, I was tired… and I told her so before I when up to teach.
It would’ve been nice to have been perfectly well rested and completely nourished before teaching class. But that’s rarely true. Instead, I often show up tired or stressed for one reason or another. I used to try to hide that from students. I’d put on a happy face and fake enthusiasm. But it didn’t feel good to do that. It wasn’t what was real. Now, I bring all of those things into the class with me (no I don’t tell everyone about it). And, most days, we have a great practice together… not because I hide what’s going on with me, but because I acknowledge it (if only to myself), and show up alongside it.
I know you’ve had these kinds of experiences:
Your kid was up all night with nightmares
Your mind is reeling because of climate change or politics
You fell last week so you’re bruised and uncomfortable
Sometimes folks come to yoga and try to push all of it aside. Ignoring it. Hiding it. Acting like life is totally perfect and attempting to make the yoga practice conform to that perfection. Just to distinguish, what I’m talking about is not the same as consciously choosing to put attention on your practice while mindfully acknowledging yourself. No, this is willfully forcing away anything that doesn’t fulfill the expectation of perfection or being right or good at yoga.
Unfortunately no matter how you try to make yourself appear perfect, it doesn’t work. None of your stressors disappear when you roll out your yoga mat.
THE PROBLEM WITH ”PERFECT”
Perfection based practice like this is a recipe for two problems: Bypassing and Injury. Bypassing is another word for things like repression, avoidance and denial. They’re all fancy ways of saying that you’re ignoring or not dealing with your life. Over time bypassing becomes a problem as you end up in a fantasy world where you’re out of touch with your emotions and your real self. You get overly dedicated to keeping up the facade of “Love and Light” or “good vibes only” all the time.
The problem with the facade is that all of that undigested stress still needs attention and care. If you don’t care for it intentionally, it will come out in other ways. You may experience rage, anxiety, or depression… the very things you might come to yoga for help with. And some folks even believe that repressed emotions contribute to the onset of disease. I’m not a doctor, I don’t know if that’s true or not. But at the least, there have been multiple studies that show that stress is a major contributor to disease. Yikes!
The other problem that comes with trying to have a perfect practice is that it increases the chance that you’ll get hurt, especially if you’re not acknowledging challenges. Ignoring the very real life circumstances that come into your practice could easily lead you to practice with less attention. When you do it’s easier to get injured. Trying to keep up a “perfect” practice when you’re exhausted could lead you to fall. Or when you’re already hurting you could over stretch as you try to prove how great your practice is.
Whether we like it or not, life comes with us when we roll out our yoga mats. Most time we’re not practicing in perfect conditions… life may be generally ok, but a lot of times it’s not great and we practice anyway. So we can choose to try to keep up the facade of perfection when we’re in practice with the bypassing and the chance for injury - or we can get real on the mat.
In my honest opinion, REAL is much more interesting.
REAL INSTEAD
Real on your mat means that all the stress, worry, tiredness, and injury come with you to practice. It means that your real life impacts how you move and you respond accordingly. Practicing this way brings much more engagement and consciousness because it asks you to pay close attention to your experience.
Now things get interesting. Each practice is something new, because each time you get on your mat you’re coming from a different experience. A new tightness invites you to explore a stretch in a different way. Your fatigue gives you reason to be easy on yourself. The agitation that needs to work out gives you more fire than on other days. Now, the fabric of your practice has texture and depth. And more importantly, instead bypassing and injury, you grow qualities like adaptation, responsiveness, curiosity, and compassion.
Deeper than any of that, choosing reality over perfection in your practice is a practice of self-care and an expression of self-love. By dropping perfectionism you can focus on what you really need in any given practice. Now you can care for yourself. Being tender and kind to yourself when you’re struggling is love in action. Your practice becomes a place to express your self-love over and over again.
GET REAL ON YOUR MAT
Start your next practice by inwardly acknowledging whatever’s challenging you right now
As you move, do your best not to push away the effects of those challenges that may come up. (If you haven’t slept well, don’t push away the fact that you’re tired)
Get real, listen to your body/mind, and shift your practice to adapt. Take a simpler variation of a posture, be in child’s pose, or kick up your energy in response.
Notice if you feel cared for by the end of practice.
When you finish, bring your hands to your heart in a gesture of self-love
FOR YOGA TEACHERS
Getting real on your mat applies to you too… perhaps even more than to the students. And, your role as teacher asks something different from you than from the students. No matter what’s going on off the mat, if you decide to show up then you’re on the hook to teach class.
That doesn’t mean that you’re experiences don’t matter. They do. It just means that you have to be even more intentional about acknowledging yourself and tending to yourself. It’s possible not to bypass or ignore yourself and to also make room for your Bigger self to show up and teach. Your Bigger Self has this magic of being able to carry the smaller challenged self along while also teaching the class. That way the part of you that is struggling gets carried until you have the space to tend to her. This may sound a little strange if you’ve never experienced a bigger force moving through you while you teach, but it’s quite remarkable when you realize that your smaller self can be quiet and allow your Bigger self to do the work. I suggest you test it out and see what happens.
The other important thing that comes with being real instead of perfect as the teacher is that you get to make mistakes. You can let yourself check your notes or forget your sequence, you can say I don’t know if you don’t have an answer to a question. You can mess things up and have classes fall flat. Realness sets up an environment of acceptance within the class. Your students will feel safer to be real with you the more you allow yourself to be human instead of perfect. And when you can get a classroom full of people to be real, then you can do some pretty incredible yoga. It’s a very powerful way to approach your classroom environment. (If you want to talk more about this kind of thing, reach out to me, I love helping teachers with this stuff!)
REAL NOT PERFECT
Just remember, our image driven culture would like us to spend our time and energy striving for perfection in every moment. But you can’t be real if you’re always trying to be perfect. And the only time you’ll feel confident and comfortable in your skin is if when you’re being real.
Let your yoga be an antidote to the pressure of perfectionism. Your invitation is to use your practice to learn how to acknowledge yourself just as you are. Accept yourself just as you are. Adapt to yourself just as you are. And to care for yourself just as you are.
Learn to love your way through your practice and you’ll soon be loving your way through your life.