Breaking down our own barriers

I always thought that I had weak arms. Give me a few miles to jog and I can finish with a smile on my face, but the thought of doing a few push ups and I am running for the hills. So when I started doing arm balances in yoga, I was amazed at the ease with which I flew up into crow pose, the joy when I finally managed to get my back foot off the floor for flying pigeon. It is amazing how we can set our minds to believe something so firmly and when we get caught off guard, we can finally realize our full potential by forgetting these barriers that have been erected in our minds.

I once knew a man who was former special ops in the Army and he would tell me stories about the crazy things he had to do, and in particular I remember how, in three days, he ran 150 miles. "Molly, your body can do anything you tell it to do. It is all in your mind, once you realize that you can do whatever you want!" Easy enough for him to say, all 6' and 250 pounds of solid muscle compared to my barely 5'2" and 105 pounds. But in the end I found it to be true.

And not only for physical endurance.

At my former studio where I studied Jivamukti, the teachers spent a month discussing addictions. Of course we are all familiar with addictions to alcohol, drugs, exercise, etc, but what we do not realize are the patterns that we set in our lives that are actually hidden addictions. When you tell yourself "I cannot make it through the day without coffee" -that is an addiction. "Every Thursday I sit down for my special shows on TV, without fail." "I need to buy this brand of cereal, it is the only kind I like." "I only date people that meet these requirements." When we come to believe that certain habits are the only methods by which we can live our lives, we have fallen prey to an addiction: "the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming" (dictionary.com).

So of course, when we fall into these habits we become comfortable and then happy in our complacency. I loved doing arm balances so much that I would often leave class disappointed when we didn't do any. It didn't feel like a worthwhile way to spend my time until I realized that yoga isn't about our favorite poses, the ones that we feel happiest doing and the most successful completing. It is about trying new poses, tweaking the ones we already know in a state of constant self-improvement, and never judging ones self-worth on whether we can do a pose or not.

And this should be held true off the mat as well. We should always try to be the best version of ourselves that we can be without bringing additional mental or physical harm to ourselves. What we cannot do today, maybe we can do tomorrow or perhaps never at all, but certainly the greatest worth is in the journey we take along the way and just knowing that we set forth on the journey at all.