It's always good to plan a safe room in your house in case of emergency and an intruder. You know - a room where you can lock the doors and make yourself the safest you possibly can. Being a survivor of a home invasion and a tornado that demolished our home while my family and I were in it at such a young age, this has been drilled into my consciousness. Sometimes you have to make do and just whatever room is the safest you designate your safe room and that's that.
I designate my yoga studio a safe room. A place where I can try something that is beyond me. A place where I can safely fail on a daily basis and multiple times in 90 minutes. A place where I can smile at that failure and inch closer with every class even when it doesn't seem like I've moved forward and in some cases it seems like I moved backward. I am safe to love it, hate it, ignore it - and still it will always welcome me back with open arms and no judgement. A place where I can let go of being hard on myself and safely navigate learning how to be human and have compassion for myself in addition to my strong sense of personal responsibility to others and my strong work ethic for myself. Honestly, it's a place where I have the opportunity to be safe from myself.
When I first started Bikram yoga, it immediately became a safe room. I was so bad at it that the perfectionist in me wasn't even given a chance to survive the hot room and I had no ego left at that point with regard to my body. I think as I got better and time went on, Little Ms. Perfectionist crept back in to my safe room I must have left the door open one day. Lord knows every now and then you have to air out that hot yoga room! My ego began having a hard time believing I'm not further along in this or that posture - "BLAH, BLAH, BLAH" and my goodness if I am now going to have goals in this then I need to work harder and beyond compassion for myself. Screwball loose in brain (as Bikram would say) says if I don't reach perfect, don't work hard, don't prove I'm worthy or at least distract them with a song and dance - no one will love me. No one but more specifically me.
That's what's called a negative self-belief. You know one of those things you grow up believing in when you are kid that gets you through and serves you as a child but no longer is the truth as an adult. Honestly, not sure how true it was as a kid but it was safe at the time. It was safer believing that I had to somehow prove myself to get love than to believe that a parent (because of their own inabilities) didn't really love me. In addition to this negative self-belief is it's lovely counter-part - that I wasn't good enough to save my loved ones from themselves. I figured this one out a few months ago but didn't realize they were so linked.
I am working on new beliefs. 1) There is no proof in love. I mean really - how do prove something so amazingly complex and beautiful and equally terrifying as love? Sometimes we love beyond all reason and there is no proof, no action, no words to even come close to explaining. It's really not fair to expect myself to constantly do a song and dance either and I'm sure that's a two way street and part of me "expects" proof from others. That's really not nice. It's also not about being in the moment either. I mean I can't love fully in the moment if I am keeping score of the past and constantly expecting of the future? 2) Be in the moment whatever that is and let the rest go 3) Only I can save myself and the same goes for everyone else. We are the captains of our own ships. However, it is helpful to have shipmates as well as trust and faith in the stars/God/Universe that it all just works out for the best. :)
Yes, all this from a 90 minute yoga class. Oh yah, I had a great class last night. I remembered that it's my choice - it can be heaven or it can be hell. All of it, every class whether difficult, painful, whatever - it's my choice to make it heaven or hell. I smiled in camel and did two sets. :) I love my perfect suffering whatever it is for the day. I choose to simply be interested in what I fear, love and hate rather than form an opinion. This is after all, my safe room.
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