This morning I cheated. On my yoga practice.
I felt bad about it, as I always do. You see, for many years yoga has been as close to a primary relationship as my own spouse. You might say I’ve been practicing polyamory with my husband and yoga. With whom did I cheat on my beloved yoga practice, you might ask? Today it was a Barre class. Some days it’s step aerobics, or pilates. In the early years of my practice, when I was committed to one yoga style — first Bikram, then later Ashtanga — I would actually feel guilty when I took a class in a different style. If I went to an Ashtanga class one morning, I would feel as if I were betraying my Bikram practice, and vice versa.
We often talk about Jewish guilt, or Catholic guilt, and I have plenty of both in my “interfaith” family. So you might say I am programmed for it. And once yoga got its claws in me, the guilt trip began. Not only did I feel guilty when practicing a different style of yoga, but I felt guilty when I ate meat; guilty when I drank wine; guilty when I slept in; guilty guilty guilty.
When I became a mother I experienced an entirely new brand of guilt. I felt guilty if I went to work, and guilty if I stayed home with my daughter instead of working.
Guilt is a highly negative emotion that serves the purpose of making us aware that we have done something WRONG, as in ethically, morally, or legally, wrong. Essentially it makes us feel like crap. But what purpose does guilt serve when we have not, in fact, done anything wrong? Or when we are merely being human beings trying to get through the day, and possibly to enjoy ourselves while doing it?
In the beginning yoga was fitness for me, but I loved that it was “spiritual” too. It made me feel like I was killing two birds with one stone, in one 90 minute class per day. Voila! Thin AND enlightened, that’s me! But as the years went by and yoga really did become spiritual for me, I was suprised to find that what my early teachers had said was true. That hatha yoga was preparation for meditation. These days meditation is the most important part of my yoga practice. The asana really is secondary. But meditation does not burn calories. So this year I went to step class for the first time in 12 years, and it was FUN. I had been under the impression for years that the only exercise I liked was yoga. It was truly an awakening to thoroughly enjoy sweat for sweat’s sake, and for the hope that it would bring not an elevated state of consciousness, but an elevated backside.
I have worked hard to come to the place where I accept that everything happens exactly as it’s supposed to in order for the soul to tranform (I heard Seane Corn say that in a workshop once and it always stuck with me). But when I feel guilty about my choices, I am negating the perfection of my experience.
When I entertain guilt as an emotion, or a state of being, I am essentially cheating on myself.
The theme for resolutions, or “intentions” as we all say now, for the 2012 new year seems to be abandoning fear and stepping fully into being one’s true self. This, at least, is the message the universe has been sending me (no, not in a flash of lightning or a sudden insight while meditating, but in the form of the blogs I read, the facebook posts I peruse, the yoga classes I’ve taken, etc.) Resolutions used to be about self-criticism of the way I had been, setting goals to become better or different in the coming year. But with the cultural switch to intention-setting, or better yet, manifesting, it seems we are all focused on becoming more of ourselves as we were meant to be.
I often suggest to my yoga students that yoga is not designed as “self-improvement” , but rather as “self-revealing”. It shows us that beneath the layers of limiting beliefs, roles, identities, and guilt, is the perfection that we already are.
Feeling guilty about my choices suggests that I regret those choices, and that I have not learned something valuable from them. That I’m living in the past rather than embracing my true self in the moment. So I’ve made my 2012 intention to forgive myself completely for the past, to accept the choices I am making in the present, and move boldly and guilt-free toward the goals I’ve set for my future. This year I will be faithful to me.
