Every summer I go to Vermont for a yoga retreat with my wonderful teacher Peentz Dubble. It has become a time of renewal for me and a place to reconnect with old friends and fellow yoga practitioners. It has also become something of a touchstone for me, as I carry the energy of the retreat and the intention I set for myself there throughout the rest of the year.
This year, though, as I was preparing for my pilgrimage to Vermont, I realized that, in a strange way, the retreats have also, in the past, been somewhat stressful for me.
I practice the Iyengar style of yoga, which is a style that's characterized by precision and extreme attention to alignment. Because of that, I can become so focused on technicalities that I lose the playfulness and joy that is inherent in every pose and the practice generally.
But I knew, of course, that the real reason for the stress was my particular attitude toward my practice. I myself had made it stressful by allowing the practice to bring out the perfectionist in me. For a perfectionist, an Iyengar retreat, with 7 hours of yoga a day, can be at once, well, perfect, because there is no end to perfecting each pose, and a challenge, because there really isn't such a thing as a perfectly-executed yoga pose.
But if you fail to challenge your perfectionist tendencies, you’re in for a boot camp, rather than relaxation and renewal. In a concentrated form, done from the ego-mind, yoga can lead to sore muscles and mental tumult, rather than peace and equanimity. You can end up having very little enjoyment and a whole lot of stress.
So this year, I set myself an intention to go only so far with my technical dedication and to focus instead on enjoying the beauty of each pose just as it was, with all of the imperfections I would bring to it. I decided to challenge and surrender my perfectionist tendencies (which tend to get exacerbated when I'm surrounded by other students) and find joy and delight in whatever form my pose assumed.
And an amazing thing happens once you let go of your striving for perfection. In a difficult yoga pose, you can begin to relax and just be with the pose. As I surrendered my perfectionism, I noticed myself inhabiting each pose, living and breathing its deeper meaning.
In that mode, Warrior I can become a pose of surrender, as you plant your feet firmly in the ground, lift your arms up to the sky, take a deep breath in and look up with a smile. You forget about pain in your thigh muscles and begin to feel yourself the spiritual warrior the pose represents, simultaneously expressing your strength and determination, and surrendering to the flow of your experience.
Triangle pose acquires a sense of playfulness as you look up sideways toward your hand floating high above you, as if winking at the heaven from this twisty position.
A hand stand becomes a child's play, as you kick your feet up in the air and look out at the world as it presents itself to you upside down. And a backbend becomes an opportunity to spread your wings and open up the front part of your body, which is typically bent inward as we sit in front of our computer screens and television sets. As you bend backward, you are opening your heart center to the world, as if telling heaven that you are open to giving and receiving – to living – from your heart.
Even in the hardest poses, simply smiling, taking a deep breath and surrendering was all that was needed to bring joy and delight to the experience. It refreshed my mind and freed me from worrying about how well I was doing compared to others. The "gripping" in my mind that resulted from my attachment to the idea of getting my pose "perfect" gave way to a spaciousness and a sense of lightness and ease.
So when the time came for us all to set our intention for the coming year, I chose these two words: Joy and Delight.
My intention for this year is to put every effort I can into becoming even better at what I do, at serving my clients with even greater dedication, at speaking my truth and living from my heart. And my intention is to do so in such a way as to bring Joy and Delight to myself and everyone else around me.
In fact, my intention is to delight in every moment of my life and in every encounter, to find joy even in the most tedious-seeming effort – in a sense, to make each effort effortless.
To do that, I need to follow the advice that Krishna gave Arjuna in that yogic classic, the Bhagavad Gita: I need to put in my best effort, and I also need to surrender the fruits of my actions and let go of the idea that I can control the outcome. I need to be humble and accept the fact that not everything will go perfectly, and that more than likely, there’ll be days when I fail. And I need to accept, in advance, the idea that it’s ok. Because there will always be the next day to try to do my best – to live this life with joy and delight, with faith and surrender.
So my yoga-influenced coaching question for you is:
Where in your life do you need to let go of perfection and begin living with more laughter and ease, joy and delight? Where can you start releasing your attachment to a particular outcome, engaging your faith, and simply surrendering to the here and now of your daily life, trusting that, if you do your best, the right outcome, the outcome that is best for all involved, will present itself? Where can you begin to release the “gripping” and bring in “spaciousness” into your mind? What would it be like to live your life - or at least a small portion of it - like Krishna in this picture, living as if playing a flute, with joy, delight, faith and surrender?
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