I love my lunchtime yoga classes at SPACE, it breaks up my day and gets me out of the office. Recently in class I was reminded of something I learned during my yoga teacher training 5 years ago in Byron Bay. You are your first teacher. I’d been into yoga for sometime before I did my teacher training. I’d also pulled muscles and injured my back in pursuit of the perfect pose. To look like the others in the class and to push myself to be better. After all isn’t this what we do in most areas of our life?
I hadn’t appreciated before that we know our own bodies best. I hadn’t been accustomed to listening to my inner voice or intuition. My focus was always external and more was always better. That’s how I ended up in my career, relationships and life burned out, injured and feeling like a failure.
Fast forward 6 years and a lot of yoga and soul searching and I’m more inclined to be comfortable with doing what I can, on the day I get, with the body I have and knowing that this is different. Same in life. Just because we’re capable of brilliance, doesn’t mean we’ll be brilliant every day.
Listening to ourselves has been undervalued for so long. Whether it’s that headstand in yoga that someone else is doing or the promotion your parents think you should go for. What do you feel? What’s your intuition telling you?
We are conditioned to compare ourselves to others, it’s our human nature in the developed world. This then leads to us wanting to be more like others and less like ourselves – to push. Now we can learn a lot from those around us but we should still be in the driving seat with that information rather than allowing it to influence us or wind up doing what we think we ‘should’.
It's something I shared in this recent video blog, using the analogy of my home grown tomatoes. So often it’s the impatience of wanting to bloom or the comparison to how others bloom that leads us further from ourselves and closer towards discontentment.
How many times have you done a pose in class even though your body is screaming no at you through your joints. How many times have you stayed late or replied to that email at 1030 even though you’d rather have been doing other things at home? But everyone else is, what will they think of me, I don’t want to let them down?? The common thoughts that run though our mind when we’re operating from a place of ‘should’.
This isn’t just about overstretching at yoga. It’s leaving the relationship before it’s too late, it’s saying no the a few more wines even though everyone else wants you to join them in another bottle, it’s telling your boss about your boundaries or calling out a friend for not being around unless they want you for something.
You are your first teacher and you know yourself better than anyone. So if you want to be in childs pose not headstand do it, if you want to be a yoga teacher instead of a lawyer, do it. If you want to leave your marriage to set an example to your kids about love and what you settle for, do it.
Your gut feeling is there for a reason, it helps us become our authentic self, you are your first teacher.