I’m sort of a “bad” yoga teacher.
I don’t meditate, and I don’t actually do yoga as much as I should, even though I know my mind and body would benefit from both of these activities.
I’ve had some little “nudges” from the universe lately telling me I need to take some more time and space for mindfulness and creativity. But as soon as I received this message I immediately thought, “how the hell am I going to find time to do this? I am back at work full-time and I have a 6-month old. I don’t have time to go to yoga classes or sit in meditation for an hour every morning.”
And I even have an advantage here. I don’t need a yoga class, or a guided meditation app. I could make up a yoga sequence without even thinking, and I have plenty of mindfulness and breathing practices memorized as well.
But just because I can create my own yoga class or meditation practice doesn’t mean I’m actually going to do it. One of the limiting factors for this is that I want to go from zero to perfect.
This kind of all-or-nothing thinking can often be our worst enemy.
We either go to the gym 5 days a week or not at all.
We eat salad with chicken for every meal for 3 days and then when we slip up one time and eat a cheeseburger we give in and say “fuck it” and eat whatever the hell we want for the rest of the month.
We miss one day in our 30-day challenge and decide to throw in the towel.
We discard any notion that even one day, one hour, or even one minute of a change in behavior can have an impact on our mindset and ability to see what we are capable of.
I have definitely been guilty of setting way too high an expectation when re-entering a self-care routine. In this particular case of trying to return to mindful activities, I created an unrealistic goal of setting aside a 30-minute window of time each morning to do some kind of mindfulness/creativity practice.
Day 1: I get my yoga mat out along with my journals and my paints, ready to dive into my “new routine” that I have wedged between the time I finish feeding my daughter and when my first work call is due to start. But when my work phone rings just as I’m about to settle in, leading to an hour-long call that eats up the only time block I had before diving into a long day of meetings, I quickly realize my mistake.
I didn’t give myself permission to adapt or adjust as needed. I needed it to be “perfect.”
I’m a failed yoga/mindfulness/self-care “expert!”
But as I mentioned in a post a few weeks back, (“Don’t forget to look up”), those of us who have experience or even expertise in a given area are not immune to needing help and support in those same areas.
So I downloaded one of those “mindfulness” apps. You know, the one with thousands of topics and teachers to choose from that you can “try for free for 7 days.” I figured what the hell. I need some options for quick-and-easy return to mindfulness activities and having content ready to go should lower my barrier to re-enter this space in my self-care goals. Plus, I’m sure I’ll remember to cancel the subscription before they automatically charge my credit card…
As I scrolled through the content of the app to find my first “class,” I saw something that elicited a revelation about how I had approached this whole re-set and how we all limit ourselves with the all-or-nothing mindset.
I saw a class called: “Chakra healing on the go”
As a trained yogi, including spending time in India as part of my certification, I couldn’t help but think of the “purists” who would scoff at this western bastardization of spirituality plugged into the never ending busy-ness of our culture.
“Do you really think you can align your 7 sacred energy centers while driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic on your way to a job that sucks your soul away?” they might ask.
I chuckled at this visual, and then immediately thought to myself “but isn’t this better than doing nothing at all to invite in mindfulness and spiritual practice? Why does it have to be done in a quiet, candlelit room with tapestries of Hindu gods and wafts of smoking patchouli incense while wearing 150-dollar yoga pants?”
True, setting up a time and space that looks different from our day-to-day can help us get out of the fray for this kind of practice, but maybe we also use the “perfect setting” sometimes as a roadblock for just doing the thing!
After all, the real work is done inside the meat suit we wear every day that can’t be discarded like those worn out yoga pants.
There are also practicalities to life that many have chosen in our culture—having a steady income, for example, which requires duty and sacrifice and often a large time commitment that doesn’t leave us with excess hours to contemplate the vagaries of life. Sometimes we need a “quick fix.”
We can’t all run off to an ashram and walk barefoot along the Ganges.
(in fact they discourage this in India, but that is a story for another blog post)
So why not find ways to make “the practice,” whatever that is, work for us?
Why not fit in what we can, when we can, and store away the little shifts we create from our “chakra-on-the-go” or whatever small step we’ve taken to feed our need for mindfulness/physical movement/nourishing food choices, allowing them to slowly fill the space like pebbles dropped into a jar.
You don’t need an hour of yoga to de-stress–simply taking 3 deep breaths can work wonders for reducing stress, anxiety or pain.
You don’t have to write 3 pages in a journal every morning–writing 3 gratitudes down on a piece of scrap paper in the middle of one random, frustrating day can change your mood and give you a chance to reset.
Eventually we will feel the fullness and weight of these sequential small movements in a way that is subtle yet impactful and that gives us permission to continue to grow at our own pace, without limiting our growth with all-or-nothing restrictions.
So I’m going to keep going with this app for a bit. I am not going to commit to doing something on it every single day, but I’ll do my best to fit it in, even if it’s just one minute of breathing.
I will give myself permission to not be perfect, but to be perfectly open to the journey.
Sure some of the gurus may laugh at the fact that we use the very technology that drives us apart and sucks our attention and focus and mindfulness to teach us meditation, yoga and breathwork, but this is like using the enemy’s weapons to strengthen our own inner army.
Talk about a warrior move!