Bring Your Whole Self
Photo by Kimberly Lempart
I spent a lot of my life navigating people and situations, and trying to figure out who to show up as. I understood what people wanted to see and hear, what they needed from me, and I skillfully became that. The reaction and validation from others became my reward. If they were happy, comfortable, smiled at me... I had succeeded.
The problem, other than the entire charade being exhausting, was that I never understood who I was, what I needed, or what made me happy.
I sat in a staff meeting many years ago at the college where I taught. A faculty member presented on the different teaching styles, and asked the audience to consider which role we fit into. Were we the disciplinarian, the expert, a few others I can't remember, or the cheerleader?
The cheerleader. When she said the word I knew that was me, not only as an instructor, but as a person. Cheerleading my way through life meant I constantly rooted people along, gave pep talks when they were down, and provided festive decoration for any occasion. Rah rah! We can do it!
There's nothing wrong with being a cheerleader. Except when you forget about yourself along the way. When you become too afraid to admit your own faults, frustrations, and harsh edges. I didn't know there was another way. I didn't know I could be both light and dark, happy and sad, rooting and bewildered.
I didn't know I was the only one who could complete me - because my body just longed to be acknowledged as a whole self.
We feel whole when we give ourselves permission to be exactly as we are, in any moment. We feel whole when we act whole. By bringing our entire self to people and situations, rather than a masked or fragmented version.
Teaching yoga online this year has taught me a lot about what showing up really looks like. My students and clients have shown me what true bravery is. They show up tired. They show up between job shifts. They show up amidst chaos, with children and pets vying for their attention just behind the next door. They show up unsure, embarrassed, and afraid. They show up wondering if they really have time for yoga today, or if any of it really matters. Yet they show up.
I show up this way too - in a new virtual world where the walls feel as if they could cave in at any time. I remind myself, and my students, that your yoga practice doesn't care if you're bewildered or angry or lost. Bring it. Bring everything you are to your mat. And I don't mean in a "pep talk" sort of way - I mean bring your tears, your screams, and your sighs. Surrender your body to the breath and the poses. Practice the self-love that is required to acknowledge yourself - your whole self - maybe for the first time.
Yoga is called a path. Because when you continually show up, you travel to a different place from where you began. I call yoga a return. Because our practice gives back to us all the parts we have abandoned. The parts we have been ashamed to show up as. The parts that crave our attention.
To my amazement, when we show up as our whole self, life gets a lot easier. Instead of trying to win people over who aren't good for us anyway, they naturally drift away. The best people for us, stay. The best people for us, want us to be a complete version. The good, the bad, the complex.
I turn, we honor our own inner self by bringing who we are to everything we do. Our gifts are able to shine much brighter and our pain is able to heal. We don't have to waste time or energy worrying about who others want us to be. Our only practice is to show up just as we are, and through that act of bravery, we will be given exactly what we need.