Expectations. It’s a big theme that’s been coming up lately
for me today. What people expect of me, how I respond to them. What do I feel
when I meet them. What do I feel when I don’t. As much as dislike expectations
and try to subvert them, the strength of my emotion proves how much hold they
have on me. And, as is usually the case, the reason they have such a hold on me
is the expectations I have on myself. Among the many things I’m working on, I’m
working on separating myself from my yammering Voice. You know the one with all
the expectations and the judgments. I’m not always the best at catching her in
the act, but when I’m getting better at it.
I will probably end up addressing this topic again, but I’ll
start with a simple example from my yoga mat. I am a pretty flexible person. I
backbend with ease and can (almost) manage the splits. But I struggle with
tight hips. For this reason, half pigeon pose and I are old rivals. My front
leg is never quite perpendicular to my body, my hips are rarely even and I
never know where to put a block or blanket where it will actually help me. I
usually can manage somehow fold over my front leg and lie there breathing
raggedly until it’s suggested we might release. Today as we lay folded over, my
lovely yoga teacher. This was agony for me. I would rather have been anywhere
but there. On my mat, my hips yelling at me, as I failed to do this silly
pigeon twist that I SHOULD be able to do.
That word. Should. It has no place on my mat (or really
anywhere in my life). Where did I pick up this expectation that I needed to do
this pose? I could try to blame my teacher, but did he really expect me to do
anything in class? No, he’s not that kind of guy. Did the girl next to me? No,
she was blissed out because she could easily pretzel her way into this move.
Did the lady across the room? Nope. She was just content to be propped up on
blocks and blankets without folding over at all. Sigh. It was all me. Me and
the Voice who said something like “You’ve been doing yoga for two years. This
is a pretty basic pose. Why can’t you do this? Oh, and Crow. For where you are
with your other poses, you should’ve be able to do this and Crow a YEAR ago.
This is embarrassing. Oh, let me bring up something else you should be able to
do….”
It was just about then when another, smaller voice piped up.
“So what?” It said. The Voice stopped.
She got flustered. And suddenly, peacefully quiet.
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