Just Start
Like most humans, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I mean, I know what I do in my day to day life. I know I wake up each day, heat up water, squeeze lemon into a cup and drink warm lemon water before anything else goes in my body. I know I practice yoga as well as teach it. I know I guide people through movement in an effort to help them feel good in their bodies. I know I write as a way to make sense of the world around me and the things in my mind. Yet I still find myself asking the question.. “what the fork am I doing with my life?”
I have an idea of what I want to do. As cheesy, cliche or corny as it sounds I want to make the world a better place. Truly, I do. I want to help other people use their worst moments or experiences in life as energy and fuel to create the life they want to live. I want to expand the knowledge of self care and what that looks like on a chemical, biological and spiritual level. I want to help people feel better, move better and love better. I want to do all this without ever having to be vulnerable myself. I want people to trust me with their vulnerabilities without ever having to expose my own. Even as I write this, I can feel and hear my heart beat quicken. My body and mind, or bodymind as my teacher Bryn calls it, feels like I’m about to step off a cliff into the unknown. Scary! But also… exciting?
Over the past year I have been ruminating on how to bring my love and deep respect for the practice of yoga into the world. How to share with people the ways you can feel better in your life with the practice. I have had the privilege of teaching asana classes in Maine, teaching a workshop on yoga and brain health, and writing a few articles for the wonderful Yoga Medicine community. I have found ways to share yoga without fully sharing myself. The impact has been perhaps inspirational to some, mildly useful to others, and of little to no consequence to most. One of the teachers in my 200hr teacher training used to say “the world doesn’t need another yoga teacher, what the world needs is what your unique self brings to the teaching of yoga.” I remember finding this both inspiring and somewhat of a hellish nightmare. I can’t just follow a linear path?! I have to be myself in order to stand out?! How do I do that? Turns out I’m still figuring it out. Historically writing is how I have found the answers to most of the questions noodling around in my mind. So here we are! Finally accepting the fact that if I really want to make the world a better place, I’m the only one who can get my ass in gear and do that. If I really want people to be comfortable sharing their vulnerable moments with me, I better get comfortable sharing some of mine with them.
While I may not know exactly what I’m doing with my life, I can still start to share what I have learned. I can share what I do know, what I think I know and what I want to learn more of. I can teach what I have been taught in my own unique way, sharing my own experiences as I do. I can be vulnerable and uncomfortable at the same time. Until maybe, much like a challenging asana practiced over time, it doesn’t feel so uncomfortable anymore. Here we go…
