I’ve just completed my first weekend of the long anticipated 200 hour yoga teacher training and it was full of emotions. As someone who is very self-aware, I realized several things over the course of this weekend. I noticed how expectation of my own performance and capability consistently has a negative impact within my life. Whenever diving into something new I have a tendency to put a lot of pressure on myself to be “the best.” This isn’t like a commitment to do my best, but an overwhelming sense of perfectionism that threatens to rob my joy and successful experience. It is the kind of expectation that beats me down when I don’t perform as I’d like. Of course, I’d always like to perform like an expert who has been doing it for 15 years (even though it’s weekend one of preparation). While I love to learn and this self-imposed weight has never caused me to turn away from learning, it can definitely snuff the flame of passion out before it has a chance to really catch fire. This weekend, I found myself infused with self-doubt throughout different points in class… primarily the parts that required me to face my social anxiety.
In prior posts, I’ve written about my anxiety and how alcohol at parties used to be my way of coping with this anxiety. Since I’ve given that up, I’ve greatly improved in this area, or so I’d thought. This weekend I was majorly triggered with meeting roughly 25 new people, being the center of focus at different times, and the realization that I don’t know quite as much as I thought I did about yoga. I thought that jumping ahead and reading a third of the books beforehand would give me an advantage, but then being in class with people who have been practicing and studying for 8 years or more before even taking the teacher training was extremely humbling.
I realized that I don’t know a lot of the Sanskrit names of the poses as well as I thought. I realized that some of the cues I’ve heard from prior teachers while practicing were completely inaccurate. I learned that I implemented cues in my own practice that weren’t meant for me. I was instinctively doing poses accurately before hearing the instructors explain adjustments to various postures that I took as general, when really they were probably addressing a segment of the population who was doing the posture wrong. Lastly, I realized that there was some rigidity within me when it comes to my faith.
Practicing awareness is a double edged sword. They say, “ignorance is bliss,” yet ignorance often creates a world where people unintentionally wound each other and break each other down rather than lifting each other up. Awareness comes with responsibility. The more self-aware you become, the more inner work you realize you must do to be free of the facets of yourself that hold you back. This weekend was one of those enlightening weekends for me. While I have made a lot of progress on my journey in terms of how I process emotional turbulence and the storms of life, this weekend was a reminder that I still have clearing to do… that I still am working for progress.
The pressure I put on myself ties in with perfectionism and people pleasing. “If only I’m perfect, they’ll like me” is the underlying theme of it all. “If only I’m perfect, I won’t have to be vulnerable” is another hidden message that weaves it’s way into all of these emotions I felt over the weekend. Then of course, there is my good old arch nemesis, “Not Good Enough!” and his friend, “Who do you think you are? You don’t belong.” screaming from the rooftops. I realized that this “demon party” stole some of the excitement and joy I had been building up for the months leading to this moment. Instead of relaxing into the experience, I found myself at war with these inner demons throughout some of the weekend session.
To make matters worse, I had an embarrassing experience with a menstrual cup, which triggered a lot of this anxiety. It was my 2nd cycle attempting to utilize my new Luna Cup and because I had successfully mastered it the day before, I thought I’d gotten the hang of it and wore it to the class on Saturday. Welp! I realized I didn’t have it… as I went to the bathroom after lunch to pee and noticed I had a small spot on the inside of my leggings. Thinking the cup was probably full, I decided to pull the cup out which resulted in what looked like a massacre all over my yoga pants and all over the white bathroom rug that was in the studio bathroom. Thank God I’d had a sweatshirt to wrap around my bloody pants and that most of the class was still away at lunch. I spoke with one of the instructors about the bathroom rug and explained I had to go home to change as a result of this mishap. In this moment, I felt like a teenage girl who had just had her period for the first time and all of the awkward feelings of shame, fear, guilt, etc. came flooding in. I’m 34 years old and instantaneously I was thrown back into the tumultuous teenage years.
Looking back, I realize this was a big trigger for all of my inner demons to come out and “play” a.k.a. lead a full-scale attack on me. As I returned to class, I felt ashamed, as if I didn’t belong there, as though I wasn’t good enough, etc. I felt the insecurity that many teenagers feel. In my mind, everyone knew and was secretly judging me. I felt really small. I felt humiliated. It was a bloody fight (ha ha see what I did there?) between my demons and I. Awareness is a double edged sword, when we see our demons clearly as they are attacking us, it can be messy. However, I would much rather see the demons coming than to be beaten down from behind without much of a clue what happened. When we see them, we gain our power back. When we see them, we can choose to fight back or disengage from them.
The stories that we tell ourselves are often so far from the truth. When we get hooked in the story, we allow our life force (energy) to be robbed from us. When we get hooked, we might as well be a fish on a dinner plate and accept that we’ll be devoured. Our power comes from letting ourselves off the hook… forgiving ourselves for creating the story around a situation. Our power comes from disengaging from the old story (the illusion we’ve created in our mind) and rewriting a new one. I’ve spoken with several of the other students in the teacher training class since the weekend and none of them have been unkind to me. I’ve attended several classes with the instructor who I had to tell about my “incident” and she has been wonderfully kind to me. Sometimes we must look at ourselves as though we were someone else (outside of ourselves) to talk ourselves off of the ledge. If the same situation happened to someone else or if someone else did what we’ve done or said what we said, how would you respond? Would it change your relationship with them? Usually, when we go through this exercise, we see how hard we are on ourselves. We are so quick to let others off the hook but are determined to boil ourselves in the pot and feast upon ourselves.
It is hard work to truly and genuinely love yourself. It is not for the faint of heart! So often when we think we love ourselves, we find that there are still areas where we are taking out the good old whip and beating ourselves down with messaging that does not nurture our souls. In many ways we are the devil, but we are also the savior who has the power to stop the brutality we inflict! We must be kind to ourselves before we can truly know what it means to love others. I’m grateful for this experience. I see that yoga is taking root and for that I am blessed and can’t wait to see what else is in store for me in the week’s to come!
Are you willing to work for progress? What triggers your internal demons? What approaches do you take to quiet them when they start screaming?