Yoga-the perfect me

So, in my quest to perfecting my practice, or perhaps is better to describe it as my quest to accomplish the poses we create during my yoga class, I always try to picture in my head what my body should look like. One would think that my slender figure should somehow be able to bend or twist with greater easiness, yet I have discovered though, that some poses are so hard to maintain, to reproduce, to extend, that I find my body reacting in just the opposite way. This happens way more often that I thought it would.  The first trick comes from the fact that they look so natural and simple as my teacher demonstrate.  Usually, my first reaction is to just try it, my brain has already conquered it in my great imagination, almost as if my mind would believe in this flexibility that everybody around me seem to possess, and is then when my body realizes that my image, my concept of how my body should work, is sometimes so far from the reality of my limitations.

I never feel I won’t be able to do it, at least, not so far. I started practicing Yoga once a week, 4 months ago, and I always figure a way to do some variation of the pose we are attempting to conquer. I always try to go for the whole thing, attempt them all, I guess I have always believe that if the next person can do it, so can I.

This has brought me to that other realization that we age physically far more quickly than our brain thinks. And I don’t mean it in terms of wrinkles and aches, I mean it more like in terms of the limitations that the physical condition of our bones or muscles have as we get older, compared to what they could do when we were younger.

So, I learn to be humble, I learn to know my body and its limitations this way or that. Discovered that if I fight to much I loos balance, if I cannot accept the pain, perhaps that pose requires more practice. I learn that we don’t have to fit into a box, not all images should look alike, all this beautiful bodies around me are just examples, I can be my own image, with my funny looking trembling poses, they will be better as I practice more.

No need to try to be perfect, just try to be me. There is effort, but no shame in the acceptance that sometimes we don’t fit in the rest of the world they way it is conceived for most people.