I
was visiting my sister for the Thanksgiving holiday and her 4-year old daughter,
Layla Rose, is a blossoming gymnastics superstar. She also takes yoga and she and I like to do
yoga together when we are visiting. As
soon as I arrived she pulled me to her gymnastics mat because, unlike her 4
year old friends, I am happy to do gymnastics and yoga for hours on end! She immediately told me that her teacher announced
in class last week that they were going to do “grown up” yoga, and when I asked
what that meant she got down on the floor and pushed herself up into
tittibhasana (see below for the visual - not the best photo but you get the idea!). It was totally
amazing! Then she asked me to do it…so I
said, well, maybe in a half hour after I do some grown up warm ups.
Then
she got up on her gymnastics bar and proceeded to do about 100 pull-ups and
other incredible feats of strength. I
watched and admired her…and then I got jealous.
Of my 4-year- old niece.
Seriously.
The
Mahabharata says “Than the strong. There
is always one stronger.” And richer, and
funnier, and happier, and more peaceful, and…the list goes on. And on the other hand, there will always be
one less strong, less happy, less peaceful, etc. Although I know all this I guess I just
didn’t expect it to be a 4-year-old! We all compare ourselves to others, it’s human
nature, but it is a slippery slope (whether it puffs us up or pushes us down),
because either way we are using an external marker to measure our happiness and
self-worth. Most often we compare
ourselves to qualities in others that already exist within ourselves so we are
more aware of them. So we can use that
awareness to be inspired by someone else's prowess…or we can choose to shrink
and feel small. The bottom line is
whichever one we choose to focus our energy on, how we choose to respond to our
innate reaction when we witness a display of great skill, is what we grow
inside ourselves. When we can focus our
energy on our own unique and individual strengths they grow and become even
stronger. When we focus our energy on
our shortcomings they grow too.
There
are many paths to the Divine, but the paths of jealousy and envy aren’t one of
them. It’s like taking a wrong turn on the way to the Wizard of Oz – one path finds
you stuck and hiding in the forest without courage, or skill or strength. The other gets you to the end and you realize
all was within your power to get there all along.
Like all things, it’s about perspective.
I
often tell the story in my yoga classes of watching an interview with Mohammed
Ali a few years ago where the interviewer asked him how did he get through the
day being so limited in what he could do due to his Parkinson’s disease,
especially after being such an amazing athlete his whole life. He said (in captions at the bottom of the
page because his speech was so slurred) “I do the same thing I’ve done every
day of my life: I focus on the things I can do rather than the things I can’t.”
Our yoga practice should help us to
embrace and celebrate our unique and individual strengths and gifts. It can be the opportunity to see what we CAN
do. Because really, most days I am pretty happy with the fact that I can do tittibhasana at all, let alone at 38 years old after having 3 kids! It may not look like Layla's pose and I may need to warm up first, but I've worked hard to be able to do it and I am proud that I can. And when I align myself with that feeling of fullness and happiness for my own body and my own practice I immediately feel stronger and more joyful and that's what I bring forth into the world.
To
help cultivate these qualities in your own life, try this off the mat practice this week: Notice how often you compare yourself
to others, either putting yourself in the positive light or the negative. Notice if it's more of one or the other. When you notice yourself doing it, see if you
can be aware that you’re judging and actively choose not to. Become the witness and see what there is to
be learned from witnessing without judgment of the other or yourself.
On the mat try
this:
Open
to Grace: as you breathe feel yourself fill up with pride for your gifts and
abilities
Open
to the place that you hold in the universe, your unique and individual thread
of the tapestry
Muscular
Energy: Embrace fully & completely your strengths
Imagine
the midline like a giant magnet for strength and worthiness and feel it pull
all of yours into it, concentrating your power
Kidney
Loop: (In Eastern medicine, the kidneys represent longevity, and long-term
energy storage – think of them as a cosmic battery pack at your back)
Plug
your floating ribs back into the positive vision of yourself that the universe
holds of you already
Activate
your cosmic battery pack and feel it strengthen your core
Organic
Energy: Let your unique gifts shine
Let
your strengths grow by extending them from the inside out
