“I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible.” Where did this B.S. (belief system) come from? Why do we think we need to be good at something first, before we try it?
Hello, I’m a recovering perfectionist. Are you new to yoga or returning to your mat after some time away? Don’t worry, I know what it feels like to be “bad” at something. I’ve held myself back from doing things because I wasn’t already good at them. I didn’t try out for the theater play because I believed “I wasn’t good enough and couldn’t act.” I didn’t submit that piece of writing to the magazine because, “There were other people who were better than me.”
Oof, these were hard lessons to learn. There will always people who are more skilled and talented than I am. Holding myself back because I “might look dumb” is no way to live life. This is your life! It is the risk of loosing face, which only stings our ego for a moment (usually).
There are risks we all need to take in order to over come our fears and move beyond our self-imposed limitations. (I don’t know what those risks are for you, but I know what they are for me, and chances are, if we’re anything alike, we might need to take risks in similar ways.)
When I try new things that I’m not already good at, I risk looking bad, falling down, appearing foolish or untrustworthy. I risk injury (mostly to my pride). I risk my old identity of “having all my shit together” for something far more interesting and profound: an experience of the unknown.
This, my friends, is scary stuff. Freedom doesn’t come from “knowing” and “controlling,” freedom comes in the continual act of letting go of what we think we know and who we take ourselves to be. Trust is revealed when we say yes to the difficult.
Our dominant culture of North America has us believe that our “skills” need to be capitalized on and we should only do things you’re good at because that’s what makes a profit. While that might be true in the business world, this approach will never work in the yoga classroom or anywhere we’re learning new skills and new ways of being.
I hold that the yoga classroom is a place to learn, not necessarily about yoga, but about ourselves. This context requires that we loosen our grip on perfectionism and adapt an attitude of curiosity. 1. Cultivate sincerity and a desire to learn new things about ourselves and 2. Don’t take ourselves too seriously so that when we fall down/get stuck/or suck at something we can try again from a new angle without too much bruising to our hamstrings or our egos.
I have been teaching yoga since 2012 and studying yoga since 2007. I have spent many, many hours in the yoga classroom and in my own living room, practicing getting it “wrong,” and trying again. Most people learn through trial and error. Lots of error.
Often my yoga students say, “I can’t do that because I’m not flexible.” Or, “I haven’t practiced in a while, go easy on me.” Or, “I’m afraid I’m going to do poorly.”
That’s the point! We’re here to learn.
We come to yoga BECAUSE we’re in pain, because we’re not doing well, because we’re in search of something bigger, because we want something more, because we need healing etc. We come to the classroom because we want to learn, not because we have it all figured out already.
And I’ll say that I also teach to learn. I don’t teach because I have all the answers. I teach so that I can learn to integrate my teacher’s teachings and understand myself further.
So, these questions follow: “Why are we afraid to try new things and look “bad” doing it?” “What are we afraid of?” “Are we afraid we’ll be “found out?””
This is yet another reason why my ultimate aim is to build a school of yoga and cultivate a community of people interested in more than “looking good.” The environment of the yoga classroom supports learning—we are bad at something until we become proficient at it. We become skilled through practice. This means repetition over a long, long period of time.
I said yes to trying new things I’m not good at and have never tried before like rock climbing, horse back riding, skiing, snowboarding, sailing, ice skating, inline skating, tango dancing, surfing, paddle boarding, pottery, making jewelry, painting, drawing, heck, even teaching yoga. (I wasn’t any good at teaching when I first started in 2012.) This is life. If we only stick to things we’ve proclaimed ourselves “good” at, then we limit our sense of self and self-discovery.
Join me as we follow this path of trying new things we’re no good at.
Much love,
Shinay