A Truth about Me
Fuck it y’all
Now’s as good a time as any to tell you that I really enjoy dropping F-bombs. Fuck is my explicative of choice. It’s so versatile - good for every occasion from the most ecstatic to the most awful and everything in between. For me, it’s a raw primal use of language when so much of what I say is necessarily sanitized. (hello, parenthood)
If you know me from yoga you might be surprised to find this out. Most days I keep my words chill and neutral. I’ve only dropped one F-bomb in a class that I can remember. That class had two students who were both already my friends. So I get it if this isn’t what you’d expect me to write about.
Maybe you’re shocked or offended. Maybe you don’t care. But it just seems like you should know who you’re dealing with here. If you’re gonna be sticking around, I think you should know what’s true.
In an age of increasing opacity, truth seems especially important.
Truth in Yoga
In Sanskrit, the vibrational language of ancient India, one word for truth is: Satya. It is an invitation to get real with yourself, with others, with life itself. It implores you to tell the truth about your experiences, expertise, and challenges.
Satya is one of the Yamas: guidelines for ethical living that are found in many places in the yogic canon but most famously in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. According to yoga: to live well, one most live truthfully. To live a life aligned with yoga, one must tell the truth. One must be true.
Aligned or Misaligned with Truth?
When I teach on Satya, folks nod their heads sagely. Most agree that they shouldn’t tell lies.
But upon further examination, most also find places where they’re not quite living up to that ideal. It starts with recognizing simple things like the fact that they’ve been telling white lies to protect a friend’s feelings or get out of obligations.
Eventually folks notice deeper trends. Suddenly they see how they lie to themselves about how they’re living. Like….they notice the impact of yelling at their kids, and how out of control they feel when they do it. Or the way their spouse’s snarky comments actually hurt even though they act like they don’t. Or all the exaggerated stories and gossiping that don’t really hurt anyone — well, except the person they’re gossiping about when it gets back to her.
Once they start looking, folks see Asatya (non-truth) everywhere.
Waking up to Misalignment
It’s not a pretty moment, well, not at first. At first, it can feel extremely daunting to notice how much lying is happening. I mean, aren’t we all generally good people? It’s shocking to find out we’re not as nice as we thought we were. It sucks to think that by protecting others’ feelings that we’re actually lying to them and to ourselves.
But it doesn’t stop there. I mean, if you’ve made it far enough down the yoga rabbit hole that you’re earnestly contemplating the Yoga Sutras, then there’s usually a deep desire to live life in a way that doesn’t cause harm. Folks almost immediately resolve to be more truthful. It’s a beautiful moment.
Now the work begins
And it’s the moment when the work really begins. The work I mean is the work of living truthfully. The work is the work of aligning with how life really is, not how we picture it in our minds.
The work can look like different things to different people. Your work depends on where you’re out of alignment. For some, the work is about speaking up for themselves when they’re in pain. For others the work is refusing to make excuses for bad behavior even when it’s hard not to. The work might be telling an acquaintance that you don’t want to take the friendship any deeper. It might be carving out time for yourself. It might be screaming into the void rather than repressing your feelings.
But I’ll tell you what the work isn’t. It’s not thinking. It’s not contemplating the idea of truthfulness and feeling like a better person for doing it. As my teacher often says: “Truth lives in your experience”. Satya, living truthfully, is an active process.
Daunted yet? Don’t be.
I don’t know anyone who’s totally truthful all the time. We have so many ways to hide from ourselves and hide from life that it’s nearly impossible to fully stand in truth 24 hours a day 7 days a week. But we can move towards it. And I think that’s enough.
Maybe it’s the events of this fucking week that have me fired up. But, I believe Satya is one of the most important yamas we can grow in ourselves right now. As with almost anything that has value, it’s worth it to try and try again. To do it badly. To do your best and mess up. To fall down a lot in the process. And to find pockets of ease where telling the truth is like breathing.
Eventually it is. What I’ve witnessed time and time again with the women I work with is that when they finally tell the full truth to themselves they exhale. They let go of years of stress, anxiety, and fear. The truth really does set them free.
I think it can set all of us free.
Look, I’m probably not gonna start dropping F-bombs into yoga classes anytime soon. But I’m also not gonna hold them back when they’re warranted in my life. The beauty of telling you this is that it sets me free. No matter what you think of me, how shocked or bored of it you are, it frees me from pretending that I’m someone I’m not.
Yes, this is a very simple example, when life is super complicated, but I hope it gives you courage.
I wish you the courage to drop any facade you’ve been creating and instead to bring a little more truth into the world. I think we need all the truth we can get right now. Big truths and small truths all make a difference. And it all starts with your commitment to Satya.
Truth from me - I felt rusty writing this post. I’ve given myself a bit of a break from writing as I regroup. But it is my intention to get back into conversation with you more frequently. If there’s something you want to hear about, I’d love to know that… shoot me an email or comment on this post.
This spring I’m holding a circle for 8 women for 8 weeks where we’re gonna practice Truth together. Find out more about it HERE.