Being Here Without Striving Or Judgment

Here we go again.

I sit in head-to-knee pose and notice the disappointment that arises because I’m barely bent over at all, much less getting my head anywhere near my knee. I struggle with the easiest version of boat posture—I used to be able to do the full version—and feel the embarrassment at where my body is today. In bridge, or a twist, or any posture really, I notice the tendency to strive for the perfect version. 

This striving is so familiar. I recognize it, this constant companion of my younger self’s yoga practice. Except back then, I’m not sure I noticed it, because I was it. This striving was my yoga practice. 

I returned to yoga after some years away. Though I’d dabbled in yoga, my practice became serious while I worked at the Omega Institute. I took a five day Ashtanga class and I loved it. The flow, building up heat, the intensity—it felt wonderful. I continued to practice for years after, attending classes in the various places I lived following Omega. 

My practice waned due to some life changes and moves, and eventually died altogether from an autoimmune disorder that left me with chronic fatigue. Exercise of any type? Out of the question.

As I emerged from fatigue and began finding my way back to movement, I once again felt drawn to yoga, but from a different angle. I had lost so much strength and stamina that Ashtanga was not only not an option, it didn’t even sound appealing. I needed something easier. 

I found two mindful yoga videos to start with, and have since added more. In my practice now, I’m reminded constantly to be with my body where it is, with my current level of strength and flexibility (or weakness and inflexibility, depending on my point of view). I still notice the striving, I long for more strength and flexibility, but I have a different perspective. Where I am is an improvement over where I was not too long ago. 

Noticing again the striving, though, points me to all the ways throughout my day I’m in a similar state of judgment. How am I striving in my life for an unobtainable perfection? Where am I trying to be somewhere other than where I am? In how many ways do I discount my own experience in favor of what I think my experience should be? 

I notice how I resist and react to so much of what goes on within and around me. My body doesn’t feel as good as I’d like. I’m not where I’d like to be in my life. I’m so used to looking for—and finding—everything that is wrong and how I am not measuring up. 

My yoga practice helps me step out of that sense of wrong or right. I come to my yoga mat and I’m asked to be with where my body is, where I am, at this moment, and explore what is here right now. I’m reminded to drop all the barriers that keep me separate from myself and from the world. How can I allow all of what is showing up—whether sensations in the body or thoughts and emotions like the striving and longing—to be here? Instead of holding myself apart to judge what is, I turn toward it, and with a gentle, open, even joyful presence say “hi!” to that experience, the way a young child truly being themselves says “hi!” The way I’d say “hi” in a world where judgment was no longer a possibility. 

Just as my striving influenced my yoga practice in my younger days, my current practice seeps out into my life. I more often remember to bring that same allowance to what I experience during the day. 

Living from a constant striving to be good enough based on judgments of how you’re not is hard work. Try living from your version of “hi!” How much more fun might that be?