One of the exercises that we do in our 200-hour teacher training program is called “The Lie I Give Up.” I think it’s safe to say that most of us walk around with lies that are just waiting to pop up anytime we are triggered or put in a vulnerable or difficult situation.

Most of the time they sound like…

“There’s something wrong with me.” 

“I’m not good enough.” 

“I don’t deserve  ____.” 

“I’m a bad mom/sister/friend/partner/etc.” 

“No one sees me/knows me/understands me.”

“I’m such a ____.”

How do these lies come to live in our heads? Welcome to life. We are born perfect, we get wounded and then we carry these wounds around and create lies from them.

I have been sharing this reading with my classes for the last few days and talking about the idea of just being enough. The fact is that we are all human. We all go through hard stuff, make mistakes and take wrong turns. The key is doing all of this but learning from it instead of retreating further into lies, ego and darkness.

Bring light, kindness and love to the world. Your playing small just brings more smallness and more darkness to the world. Your standing in your power and bringing your light into the world (regardless of how you’ve fallen or erred) will give others the strength to do this same. You cannot let your lies take away your ability to do this.

Tonight I read this J. Raymond piece to my class while still talking about the lies we carry. What resonates the most for me with this piece is that “you are not alone.” Our lies alienate us and make us feel like we’re the only one on the planet that has this problem. It’s simply not true. No one is perfect, no one has it all figured out and we’re all living and learning.

I want to share an extremely powerful example of a lie in action and how to take its power away. I am mentoring a young woman who graduated from our teacher training program in 2015. She has been teaching outside the studio for a year but is now stepping into teaching at Y2 Yoga. She has worked our front desk for a long time and feels comfortable (and safe) in that role.

On Monday she co-taught a class with me. She absolutely rocked the portion of class that she taught with me but after class she burst into tears. I asked her what was coming up for her and she said, “It was your message. My lie was right with me and I almost bailed on class today. My lie is that ‘I don’t deserve to be heard.'”

I encouraged her to journal about the experience, what came up and how she was feeling and she shared it publicly, and gave me permission to do the same.

“All of a sudden it felt real. Like ‪#reallyreal‬. I wanted to leave. To walk out of the room and tell @jdecurtins, ‘maybe next week.’ I have been teaching for almost a year, currently 11 or more classes per week. But these people have seen me behind a desk and/or scrubbing the locker rooms for the past year and a half. ‘They don’t care what I have to say; they’re here to take Jen’s double shot, not my shitastic, newbie warm up,’ I tell myself.

We all have lies that we tell ourselves; they creep in when we’re feeling vulnerable. Like weeds, they find and expand the cracks in our foundation, taking root in the terra firma of our soul (yes, our collective soul). My lie is that I’m not worthy of being heard.