The leaning in & letting go

Sometimes (read: oftentimes) when I am doing yoga, I lose my balance. I slide off center and lean to one side, threatening to topple over entirely. What I have discovered is that when I jerk back, out of fear of falling, I almost always over correct and end up throwing myself to the floor. (Ouch.)

It took me quite a while to learn that correct motion in yoga is like correct motion on the road. When you run off the road in your car, the advice is to not over-correct. Or when you are taking corners on a motorcycle you lean into the curves.

It took me a long time to get to a point where I could comfortably headstand and now it is my go to energy booster. But here is what it took me even longer to learn about balance: if I want to maintain balance for any length of time, I must not freak out when my balance is thrown off a little. 

If I do, I fall. 

It is only when I am able to maintain neutrality & acceptance to my off-kilteredness that I am able to withstand the sway. Instead of “Oh crap. I’m about to fall!” (and proceeding to jerk in the other direction and topple to my demise) my more reasonable approach is, “Oh, I am misaligned. That is interesting. I must have gotten distracted…maybe I’ll saunter back to center.”

You think I am kidding and exaggerating. But I’m not.

Your freak-out reactions to life create more drama.

Stop it.

Feel better? Isn’t that helpful? Just stop.

It is easy to react though, right? Fear is generally the fueling culprit of our knee jerk reactions. 

“Oh, that doesn’t feel good so it must be BAD. Abort Abort!”

Like heartache for example: “Oh…she’s not being very nice right now. I did not sign up for this. Our marriage must be doomed.” (Proceed to check out and create more of what you don’t want in your relationship: distance and struggle.)

Or in life: “My first attempt did not go at all like planned so clearly this just isn’t meant to be. I guess that’s it then; I am done.” (Proceed to lay your dreams, goals, desires, etc. on the shelf and carry on to be resentful later. NBD.)

When we experience negative emotion, fear (read: shame) says, “quit while you’re ahead. stop before you’ve made an even bigger fool of yourself. cut and run before anyone notices what happened.”

But there is not life there for you. There is not even any possibility for life there for you. 

When we experience the sway of this discomfort we can run or lean in. Running generally only gets us to one destination: a place of solitude where the consequences (good or bad) of our choices can catch up.

Leaning in allows us to do a little investigating before we make a decision. 

Like in heartache for example: “Oh…she’s not being very nice right now. I did not sign up for this. She’s been acting this way for quite some time now. I wonder what is going on?” (Proceed to lean in, ask scary/vulnerable questions that might have scary/vulnerable answers and possibly begin a journey towards healing…)

Or in life: “My first attempt did not go at all like planned. That hurt. And sucks…but I think I can do better next time. I wonder what I’ve learned from this and how I can make the next try an even better success?”

Leaning in does not guarantee success. 

It simply guarantees the possibility for it, 

where as running away slams the door on opportunity. 

Life isn’t steady. There is a sway in most everything we do.

For as long as we continue to show up and live there will eventually come a wind that causes a sway. You get to choose your {re}action.

“Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.” 

{Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do}