The First and Most Important Lesson
So, there I was, soft cushioning of a new yoga mat beneath my feet, the smell of incense lingering in the air, the low murmur of excited voices around me as we embarked on something as terrifying as it was exciting… teacher training.
Full of ideas and visions of what the months ahead would hold, I found myself battling with other images, other ideas. Those of comparison and failure before I’d even begun. I knew entering the door I would stand out in this space, I am far from the Instagram yoga ideal after all. With my brown skin, thick thighs, and shall we say, voluptuous curves, I don’t meet the yogini stereotype and while usually, that was more than okay, entering a space as a vulnerable beginner waves of insecurity washed over me, and doubts took hold.
We began with movement and standing at the front of my mat with my feet placed under hips rather than close together to give myself the support and solidity I needed, I closed my eyes and followed by breath. Bending forward my awareness of my body filled my thoughts. The press of my chest and belly squeezing the air out of my lungs as my fingers grazed the floor. The painful knowing that each cue, each movement, was made for the person next to me, in front of me and behind me, but not for me, not for this body.
The words of my teacher broke through and as I focused on her I slowly dropped out of my head and into my true home; sensation. Guided through slow fluid stretches I felt space open up within me. Chest expanding, limbs lengthening, and I transformed from the duckling to the swan. I remembered why I was becoming a teacher, why I had fallen in love with this practice, and why day after day I returned to my mat.
The way we experience our bodies is rarely shaped by how we actually feel. Instead, it is built on all the external chatter that fills our minds. The expectation of flexibility, the beautiful aesthetic that floods social media, all of which is so far removed from yoga’s birthplace.
In the same way that a pool of water offers a heavily pregnant woman her ability to move, a good teacher and the right cues offered me a pathway back into my physical experience and out of the confines of my head.
She invited us to keep our eyes closed for the entire practice. To deprive ourselves of that one sense and in doing so to open ourselves to the full experience of the others. To listen to our breath and the voice of our bodies, to move slower and with more care in the effort to maintain balance. To answer only to our own experience of what was right for us at that moment, rather than trying to ‘keep up’ with what the person next to us was doing.
Yoga has become a group exercise, and while it can be that, above all, it is a personal experience. A dance in which we both lead and follow as we build connection and trust with ourselves and our ever-changing needs.
On that first day, I was given the most life-changing lesson of the entire course. My experience of my body can be shaped either by my brain and all its society-fuelled judgments, or it can be shaped by what I feel. Fat and thin are irrelevant words, with connotations that limit and distract us from the gifts the mat has to offer. Instead, I choose to ask, am I spacious or tight, am I tired and needing a slow yin focused flow, or am I feeling energised and dynamic. And most importantly of all, what does my body need today to return it to balance? Both our eyes and our words are heavy with the opinions we imagine others to hold. By closing one and allowing the noise of the other to float on past, we create space for our bodies to be a tool that can further us on our journey to peace and equilibrium, and we offer ourselves the opportunity to practice not only physical movements but the internal movement from self-doubt to self-acceptance.