Trading Our Push To Compete And Compare For Compassion And Challenge
After weeks of practice, I’d finally done it – I could get myself up into headstand without smashing my heels into to the wall, and what’s more, I could hold it peacefully for a good thirty seconds. Imagine my dismay when, during a visit with my husband’s family in Berkeley, my sister-in-law casually announced that her Yoga class was not only holding headstand for eight minutes at a time, but was working on handstand. My blood boiled. She and I had started practicing seriously around the same time. What had happened?
Tuning out of the conversation, I thought back to my studio in Long Beach, where no two sessions are alike and teachers each use their own blend of different styles. My sister-in-law’s studio teaches exclusively Iyengar, and there, I decided, lay the problem. My studio obviously lacked focus. Why, in one session we’d spent three minutes jump roping. Jump roping! For God’s sake, why weren’t we standing on our hands!?
Of course, at the time, I’d found those three minutes wonderfully invigorating. I hadn’t noticed any problem with my classes until learning about my sister-in-law’s feats of strength up north. And wait a minute – hadn’t I originally started Yoga as treatment for anxiety and back pain? Hadn’t I promised myself that I wouldn’t get ambitious? When had my practice become a giant contest?
In Buddhist thought, feelings of competitiveness and jealousy – and the distress that arises from them – are part of what’s known as bhava tanha. Bhava tanha literally means the desire for existence, but can also refer to the desire to be a better or different version of yourself, and as I’ve learned firsthand, it can infect even our most well-intentioned activities. I notice it in the studio, when I start checking the mirror to see how my pose matches up with what I want it to look like, or with the poses of everyone around me. It can arise between styles, too, when practitioners get caught up in insecurity and judgment; I’ve met Iyengar practitioners who cluck their tongues at Vinyasa flows, Ashtanga lovers who roll their eyes at Bikram. And I’ve certainly done my share of justifying my own choices by trashing others’.
The dangers of competitiveness are clear. On a physical level, pushing your body past its boundaries is begging for an injury. On a spiritual level, criticism and doubt can give even the most rejuvenating poses a sour flavor. Not that competition itself is inherently bad – I support, for instance, the campaign to include Yoga in the 2012 Olympics. Friendly competition can be a source of great fun and a nice way to celebrate Yoga’s grace and beauty. But it’s when ambition becomes the primary reason for practice – or when it blocks the mind/body/spirit connection which is Yoga’s raison d’être – that problems can manifest.
So how do we let go of bhava tanha in our practice? One simple solution is to remind ourselves that differences in schedules, bodies, income and other factors will affect each person’s ability. For instance, my sister-in-law gets up at six each morning to go through her sequence, while I only practice a few times a week. When my back pain flares up I revert to gentler poses. If she and I were clones, maybe I’d be busting out handstands, too! Mindfulness meditation can be helpful, as well; compassionately noting feelings of judgment as they arise can help us examine and eventually release them.
The easiest thing we can do to cut down on the sting of bhava tanha is keep our eyes closed, when possible, as we practice. My teacher encourages each class to close our eyes in order to improve balance and keep our attention on how a pose feels, rather than how it looks, but it wasn’t until I realized how competitive I’d gotten that I really understood what she meant.
Do I wish my studio taught more inversions? Sure, it’d be nice. But it was only when I started comparing myself to other practitioners that I started to fret about it. Any meditation teacher worth their salt will tell you that challenges like this are actually opportunities to reflect on and deepen your practice – and when you take advantage of them, marvelous things can happen.
Julia Glassman practices Hatha Yoga and Vipassana meditation in Long Beach.
By Julia Glassman
