While catching up on reading my book, Meditations from the Mat, this morning, I came across an anecdote the author uses about his feet.
The story reminded me of my own feet...
When I first started practicing yoga, I had terrible balance. I struggled to hold postures through our balancing series, and I was often embarassed by falling out of the poses. My whole body would grow taught with concentration as I fought, tooth and nail, to hold myself in the poses. I remember being very confused by my poor balance, as I was a gymnast, I can walk a tightrope and a slackline, and I'm just, generally, very naturally athletic. I told myself there must be some explanation for my struggle - some reason for my poor balance - some reason that was beyond my control.
Specifically, I remember bringing this up to my teacher one time. I told him I thought the reason for my poor balance was my skinny feet. They simply weren't wide enough to adequately support me. I remember he nodded his head, but said nothing. I later realized, this was because I was so new to my practice, and I wasn't yet prepared to accept the truth of my poor balance. Skinny feet, fat feet, flat feet or high arches, it didn't matter how my feet were shaped, because the cause of my poor balance was my own laziness. I had never developed the foot muscle, the ankle muscle, the leg muscle to support myself. I was content with my body as it was - I was very resistant to change - and I didn't want to admit that I was, in any part of my self, lacking. It amazes me to look back to those moments, all those years ago, and reflect upon my own mental state.
The first lesson I learned from yoga was the lesson of letting go. My ego was constantly telling me to do better, to be better. To be more than those around me. To be more than myself. To be perfect. My ego told me that everything I already was, was not enough. What a terrible lie that was. I can't pin-point the exact moment when I decided to surrender to my practice and my body. I think, rather, it was a slow process of releasing the ego, bit by bit, that began my transformation.
As one who began my own spiritual journey around the age of 16, I had developed the notion that I was already wise. That I already knew things other people my age didn't. But I also had the self-talk in my head constantly telling me that I still wasn't good enough. This sort of paradoxical, ego-driven mental space is an interesting one, because, while one is constantly seeking means of self-improvement, one is also rendered very resistant to receiving criticism, or, more significantly, to receiving help.
People can sense this about each other, and my yoga teacher sensed this in me when he chose to refraid from pointing out that skinny feet should not make a difference in my yoga practice.
Over time, as I remained committed to my yoga practice, my body grew stronger, my balance improved, and I developed muscles in places I didn't even know muscles existed. And through all of this, I eventually came to realize that, skinny feet or fat feet, my balance depends much more on my own willingness to grow, to change, to surrended to my own limits while patiently working to push past them.
We are not born into the world with the muscle to support ourselves. We are born into the world soft and floppy and full of potential. When we decide we want our independence - we want to move by ourselves, feed ourselves - we slowly but surely take tiny motions to achieve this. This constant practice of trial and error eventually results in our building enough muscle to flip ourselves over, to crawl, to walk, to run. What a beautiful lesson - the first one we ever learn - that we almost completely forget as we grow older. Growth, building strength, both take time, take effort, take patience, take persistence. We must build the muscle necessary to achieve balance. As babies, we don't make excuses for ourselves about why we cannot yet walk. We simply keep trying, over and over, until we do it. From the first steps we take, life remains much the same. In order to achieve anything, we must continually make this initial and then persistant effort. We must keep falling until we can finally stand. We must keep walking until we can finally run.
As we grow, these seemingly insignificant moments in our life - things like poor balance and skinny feet - become some of our greatest teachers. As we grow, we learn to never give up in our effort for greatness. As we grow, we begin to remember, we learned to stand with our parents hands wrapped firmly around our waist. And suddenly, falling out of a yoga pose doesn't seem so awful. Noticing our weakness becomes a great strength. And accepting help doesn't seem so scary... when we remember, there's a reason people never stop saying, "baby steps."
