Photo: David Young-Wolff, davidyoung-wolff.com
My teacher, Erich Schiffmann, said it best, “If you want to push yourself in Yoga, push yourself to show up often.” With a chuckle, he would add “Once you’re there, there’s no need to push yourself. If you do, you get hurt. Then you get mad at Yoga, and it’s not Yoga’s fault. It’s your fault, for pushing yourself.”
Most of us begin Yoga because we want to feel better. We want to be healthier, have more energy and feel more at ease with ourselves and others. But somewhere along the way, our deep-rooted patterns of perfectionism have transferred onto our Yoga practices. We’ve taken our daily struggle to be the best, to achieve and to excel, into our Yoga – completely defeating the purpose.
Our drive towards perfectionism has origins way before the Yoga mat. We want to be the ideal parent, the model employee, an exemplary spouse. All the time we are striving for perfection, we are missing life along the way. It is the nuances, the imperfections, the mistakes that bring us back to our own hearts and into the present moment.
How endearing is it when someone you love in a totally non-perfect, non-graceful way, hits the ketchup bottle one too many times and ends up spilling it down their white shirt? Don’t you just love them for doing it? What about the smile that it gives you, the laughs that you share and even better, the story you get to tell about it? “Remember the time you spilled ketchup down your white shirt?!”
It is hard for us to believe the same goes for the Yoga room, but I swear it does. As a teacher, I love when a student goes flying out of a balancing pose. I love the look on their face, the sounds they make and – hopefully – the laugh they get from doing it. In that moment when they are falling, the imperfection connects me to them, we are totally in the now, totally together in union, Yoga – and it is the mistake that brought us there.
My heart goes out to the students whom I see pushing, yanking and straining themselves into postures because they think it will help their practice. Instead of learning to relax, flow with grace and breathe, I’ve seen yogis come out of a Yoga class feeling more stressed out than when they went in. It is wonderful to be passionate, precise and courageous in our Yoga, but is it really about an agenda? Don’t we spend enough time trying to “get things right?”
Instead of mechanically doing the same Yoga postures you did yesterday, practice being a yogi. Try asking yourself questions like, “Where in the body does the breath travel?” or “Where can I be more grounded?” Or even better, “Where can I relax without collapsing?” It will help you focus on the real goal, which is being totally accepting and present with what is.
I may not be doing a triple back flip with a twist, but when I practice, I am here in this body right now. When I show up and “not push,” I stop “doing the Yoga” and start “being the yogi.” I step into myself as I am right now. I am not perfect, but present.
Sara Elizabeth Ivanhoe is a graduate of the Yoga Philosophy and Yoga and Ecology programs at Loyola Marymount University. She currently teaches at Yoga Works, Santa Monica. Her latest DVD, Yoga on the Edge, is available on her website: yoganation.com.
By Sara Elizabeth Ivanhoe
Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.