#LightSideUp Tanya RyanWhen you’re the new guy in a yoga class, you are the furthest thing from the graceful expression of physicality that you wish you could be.
Everything is foreign. This abnormally calm, spandex-clad human is asking you to put certain body parts near other body parts that in no other context of life would ever be near one another.
Oh my god why? And why keep going back? Well, amongst a few noticeable benefits I specifically liked that it was easier to bend and put the towel on my head post-shower. I always used to look around in yoga. I watched the beautiful woman beside me gracefully lay her forehead against her shins.
She basically floated through each pose like she was somehow gravity-resistant. I envied her. I was a version of the tin man; fingertips eager to one day reach past my knee caps.
I quickly figured out that envying her practice didn’t actually make mine any more enjoyable. In fact, it was quite the opposite. The more I watched her, the more I noticed my brain-goblin grow louder and more obnoxious. Like its livelihood was sustained on getting regular hits from my envy. When I finally stopped watching I began to enjoy my practice. The practice itself didn’t become easier, but I took more pleasure in it. I enjoyed challenging myself to create these smoother, fluid movements.
One day, years later, I walked out of class and into a conversation between two women.“That was ridiculous. It was so hard. I don’t know if this yoga thing is for me. Yoga was made for people like this,” she referenced to me. “These beautiful, flexible, graceful women.”Ah yes. One of those life-coming-full-circle moments.
How often do we measure our accomplishments, our achievements against someone else’s when we don’t have the full story. We assume all sorts of things about people — that certain things must come naturally or easily. That our journey is more difficult with more obstacles to overcome. That because someone makes something look easy, that it must actually be easy for them. It’s what I did with the yoga-woman I observed and envied - and later, it’s what was assumed of me.
I think that our buying into this falsehood feeds the part of our mentality that pits us against each other — that leads us to compare and compete — when we could instead reach out to one another for camaraderie, compassion, and guidance. There is a tremendous amount of isolation and heartache we could save ourselves from experiencing if we were all to remind ourselves and each other that the assumptions we make based on the optics of someone else’s life, body, relationship, backbend, glorious mane of shiny hair… are not constructed from a comprehensive story.
Even our own lives need some perspective shifts and re-evaluations at times. Yoga is what reminds me to take things day-by-day. That by forcing something to occur, I only end up hurting myself. Yoga reminds me to accept the natural rhythms of the challenges presented to me.
It reminds me that if I show up as a willing student, I will walk away with new insight. It reiterates that allowing and resting are just as important as creating and striving; and that there is no space for something new without releasing something old.
And for the love of Pete, keep your eyes on your own damn mat.
Tanya Ryan is a local singer-songwriter with an appetite for life and learning. #LightSideUp is for the candid exploration of everyday life, events, emotions, and stories with the intention of finding the lessons and teachings buried in the normalcy of daily living.
