“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
A regular yoga practice does not automatically make us yogis. A lot of people mistakenly imagine the world of yoga to be different from the rest of the world, but sometimes I think yoga amplifies us, defines not just our better qualities but also those not so nice ones as well. Those prone to ego can grow an even bigger one as it were.
Practicing yoga doesn’t change a person overnight. All the difficulties of everyday life are still there as soon as you get off your mat and the only thing we can control is our reaction to these difficulties.
We are all human and we all make mistakes. However hard we try we will probably continue to make mistakes. And while it is easy to spot flaws in other people it isn’t always so easy to spot them in ourselves. Believe me, as the self-crowned Queen of Unsolicited Advice, I know this. The phrase “physician heal thyself” springs to mind.
A long time ago during my yoga teacher training, I attended a workshop on hand balances. The teacher was strong and flexible and could not understand why I had such a problem with hand balances. She even insinuated that as this was such a problem perhaps I should think twice about teaching yoga.
My problem with hand balances is two-fold. The pain in my hands and wrists from the fibromyalgia can make it excruciating to put weight through them a lot of the time. Secondly, the curvature of the spine from my scoliosis is exacerbated when I’m upside down. Basically that means that without a wall, I fall over sideways. Which in some ways is hilarious.
These days I show my yoga students this amusing overbalance just to show them that none of us are perfect. Back then it was still quite a touchy subject. My fragile ego was shattered by an off-handed remark about my ability to teach. Yoga practice may amplify overinflated egos, but it also amplifies the underinflated as well; lack of self-esteem and self awareness. The strong flexible teacher reacts negatively to the condition of scoliosis and the scoliosis sufferer reacts negatively towards their practice. I’m not sure that in this case either teacher or student were practicing yoga. We were both certainly a long way from being yogis.
I call this blog the Suburban Yogini. That is less a description of me than a description of what I aspire to be. I have come on in leaps and bounds since that workshop on hand balances; I am more sure of my practice, my teaching, my path in life. But I can also be stubborn, irrational, impulsive and moody. I get impatient and irritated too easily a lot of the time. I forget to breathe and open my heart when I’m in everyday situations. I am very much a work in progress.
We can choose to participate in competitiveness, ego and negative feelings or we can tread our own path and try to create examples of open-mindedness and compassion, transcending not only the competitiveness around us but also our physical bodies themselves, wonky spines, painful hands and all.
Because, as Dumbledore says, it is our choices in life that define us.
How do you practice compassion and open-mindedness? What choices have you made that define you?
