Every now and again I find myself in a spot of questioning my authority/ability/worthiness to do what I do. I tell myself this story that there are many others who are more knowledgeable/qualified/serious than I am and that I’m somehow not in the place I should be professionally or personally to be telling anyone anything about working out, eating, yoga or how they are showing up in their day to day lives.
And then I remember that I’m a human being and so are all the other people that are reading what I put out there and taking my classes. And that the narrative playing in my head is a story and not the truth. Am I perfect? No. Do I know everything about fitness, nutrition and yoga? No. Do I make mistakes? Yes. Do I learn from them? Yes. Do I sometimes wish I could go back and do it all again knowing what I know now? HELL YES.
We learn through experiences. It’s that whole principle of “forgive yourself for not knowing what you know until you learned it.” I can honestly say that I learned more from working in the corporate world than I ever did from the J-School at the University of Georgia. I’ve learned more from teaching thousands of yoga classes than I did from yoga teacher training. I’ve learned more from working with clients one-on-one than I did from my NASM personal trainer certification.
And perhaps the most important lesson that I’ve learned is that nothing matters more than being human. Navigating your way through epic mistakes, bad decisions, heartbreaks, loss and grief, steps down the wrong path…that’s the stuff that changes you. Getting it right all the time, while it sounds good, is a) impossible and b) does not result in that deep growth and self-awareness.
I had so much on my heart today as I led our teacher trainees through assist training and then taught my 4 p.m. hot class. I was in this spot of “Who am I to teach you about this practice and inspire you to do/be/feel anything? Because I certainly don’t have this all figured out.” So I had to start my class by telling my students that we are on equal playing fields. I teach from a place of what I’m working on and learning in my own life. I told them that I don’t profess to have special powers other than just being a human that’s trying to continue to grow and get to know myself more and more.
When I first started teaching I would try to find these inspirational quotes to read in class or search for hours for passages and stories to read them. Anything that wasn’t my own words. These days, I rarely rely on readings and instead take time before class to reflect on what’s on my heart and share from that place.
I’ve been reading the book The Untethered Soul at the recommendation from a student. (I swear to you that they teach me more than I will ever be able to teach them.) And in it Michael Singer writes…
“You realize that you will always be fine. Nothing can ever bother you except your edges, and now you know what to do with them. You end up loving your edges because they point your way to freedom. All you have to do is constantly relax and lean into them.”
I think part of why I love my yoga practice, teaching yoga and writing this blog is that they’ve taught me so very much about my edges. And that when I come up against them, lean into them and share them, that I can find freedom. Thus the reason why a girl who has a tendency to close, close, close is working on opening.
I own all of the times that I closed because I was too afraid to open. But I learned so much from the edges that those times pushed me to. And what I learned more than anything is that we’re all in this together and that I’m learning through experiences that are both crazy beautiful and happy as well as the heartbreaking pain just like all of you are.
So thank you for being here and reading what I put out into the blog world. And thank you for holding the space for me to be more open and vulnerable here. I hope that it translates into you feeling like you can do that in your own lives as well. I don’t have this figured out and I postulate that none of you do either. I like to share what’s working for me in the present and give myself freedom to change as needed and as I learn more about myself.
We’re all just fine where we are today. Embrace your edges and practice relaxing into them and ask them what they want you to learn.
I love you guys and I’m so grateful for you.
