Can You Accept Your Imperfections?
The internet is filled with pretty pictures of shapely yogis doing poses in beautiful surroundings. And there is certainly a place for that in the blossoming conversation about yoga happening right now.
But is that all there is to yoga? Of course not.
Asana is but one limb of the eight limbs of yoga. And, as master teacher Baron Baptiste tells host Colleen Saidman Yee in this week’s new episode of Talking Yoga, “All the other limbs are meant to be experienced and practiced within the one limb of asana…Through Asana, we come into a pose – what else of yoga is available, the other seven limbs, to be realized, to be experienced?”
This trend may be part of a bigger trend that Baron and Colleen talk about in this episode. The explosive growth of yoga in the United States is bringing in many new practitioners, and some of them are bringing with them their “achievement oriented context of life” to their practices. There is a focus on performance that can obscure an important truth: that yoga is also about accepting what is.
As Baron puts it, our “imperfections have their own kind of beauty.” He’s even gone so far as to name his most recent book Perfectly Imperfect, in response to trends he’s seeing as a yoga teacher.
There is even enough appearance-based judgment going on in our community, in our yoga studios, that it has given rise to the body positive movement in yoga.
And that brings us to this week’s question. What do you see when you look at your own body, and those of your fellow yogis? Do you see fat? Do you see thin? Do physical limitations like age or disability influence your view? Do you see failure? Or do you see opportunity? Do you see hope? A path for potential?
Or can you see imperfections for what they are, to accept what is, embrace sentosha, do your daily yoga practice and carry on with the yoga journey that we are all love?
Tell us what comes up for you, right here in the comments below, or in the discussions about this episode on Twitter and Facebook. Be sure to include the hashtag, #PerfectlyImperfect.
And be sure to watch our newest episode, Beyond Asana, with Baron Baptiste, which will premiere this Tuesday, July 26th, at 11am EDT on our website, iTunes and our YouTube channel.