Wrestling With Yourself
I entered day 34 of 90 straight days of hot yoga at Moksha Yoga Los Angeles, I entered with a sense of renewed vigor for my practice. Last night I practiced and found some new understanding in my practice, and some strength, our teacher last night Carolina explained the story of warrior poses and where they came from and their meaning. After hearing the story I felt such purpose in my warrior poses and strength, so entering morning class today, I felt renewed. I laid on the mat, closed my eyes, and let gravity pull me down, and let my breath rise and fall.
As the breath was falling I had an image of the Mona Lisa painting, and then other images of statue’s and art work. What occurred to me was that every good work of art starts with an empty canvas, block of clay, and the artist gets an inspired idea of what it may look like and begins to paint, and build, from there. Yet each stroke of paint is adding to the beauty of the work. So within the so called perfection of a painting or statue is the imperfection of it all. The imperfection allows the so called perfect art to shine. So essentially all art is beautiful because it embraces the imperfection. Like yoga practice does. Yoga encourages you to fall, laugh, be imperfect, and get up and try again.
As our teacher Lisa started practice I felt imperfect in every pose, and I started chuckling to myself. I dropped out a few times and came back into it smiling. Lisa was wonderful and focused us on alignment and maintaining the poses for extended periods with great care and gentleness. Helping us find the grace of the breath in each pose. By falling, we learn to get up, and then we learn from the fall. Yoga is like great art, each of us has an idea of what it may look like, feel like, or have read some yoga magazine forgetting the models took 5 hours to get the pose right before they took the shot and published it, or we have seen masters hold poses or do poses with ease, forgetting that for years and years they were moving through their own imperfection to perfect the moment.
Life is a balance between imperfect and perfect. I have noticed that the majority of my practice is imperfect, falling, and regrouping. Years ago this would’ve drove me up the wall. Because I wanted perfection in my life, I wanted life to be ideal, and felt people should know better, but frankly we learn that life is all about embracing this, this as it is. Observing it, experiencing it, and then allowing the next pose or moment in life to flow. So be imperfect and embrace it.
I used to take classes where the teacher/s would have students come in front of class because they thought their practice was incredible. Then the mind goes, “Well, that is what I am going for or wow I can never do that.” Cut to now, and I realize that life is not about comparing, competing, but celebrating each other. Celebrating our life as a yoga community, through consciously making choices in our practice to embrace the fall, the imperfect, each other, and say, “Yes I can.” Behind our imperfection is perfection glowing, shining, and cheering us on. We are all here on purpose and each of us makes a difference to someone or to groups.
On to day 35….Namaste
David Matthew Brown: Heartspirational Speaker and Sessions. Author, “The Book Of Light: The Heart Opening” and his second book coming in 2013. David is a blogger, writer, poet, spoken word, actor, and Single Dad, soccer coach for U8 girls 
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