Let's Get Messy

I wish I’d been able to get messy years ago, I would’ve saved myself a lot of heartache.

For years everything I did or wanted to do was held up against an impossible yard stick. My meagre attempts at creating - writing, performing (and teaching when it came to it), was compared to everyone else’s and usually against people who had become masters of their craft. Can you see how pointless that is?

Every way I wanted to express myself had to be the grandest most incredible thing anyone had ever seen or read or felt and the problems with this are plentiful. There was a pride in my labelling myself a perfectionist. ‘Oh I’m a perfectionist,’ didn’t mean I spent weeks labouring over the tiniest nuance, tweaking minor details until – et voila – I offer up the most sublime version of what I had been working on. No. It meant I stayed frozen, circumventing an idea I’d been given and never acting on it because fear is real.

A need for perfection can be a very powerful strategy of fear designed to keep us exactly where we are - in the comfort zone where we’ll never be seen, never be felt - and most importantly - never ever be harmed by criticism or rejection. We have the urge to create, to be or do something greater with ourselves. We’re human beings, it is our nature to expand by making things.  Just as we breathe in and out effortlessly, there’s a natural process of assimilation and creation in every one of our lives. We absorb our environment, digest and process it through our unique perspective then create something which reflects our interpretation of it. This is self expression and a deep way to connect with what is. It's Art and we are each Artists. (Notice how it feels to think of yourself as an artist and begin maybe to feel your blocks). Whether you’re a bartender, a care worker, a hair dresser, you’re an artist. You might be creating a drink, an experience, a hair style – whatever it is, you’re creating.

We each create our very lives and they become our own work of art.

The misguided belief that what I had to offer was worthless because of it wasn’t perfect caused me to waste time and energy on some very toxic self soothing habits - alcohol, drugs and drama. A writer friend said to me the other day she creates drama in her life to prevent her from creating drama on the page. We can’t consciously harness and focus our energies on what we truly want to do if we’re living in chaos. The great irony was I drank so much because I didn’t believe I was good enough to create my version of art, yet by staying drunk or being constantly hungover I would never be good enough because my energy needed to create was locked into my addictions. It was a cop out, a sneaky way to avoid myself. 

This has been a very slow painful process of self examination and facing up to things and I had to be ready for that. Yet, if I had had yoga earlier in my life the process would’ve been much shorter and much less painful.

Lately I’ve been telling my students to ‘let it be messy,’ (safely, or course.) To feel into their bodies and let themselves be guided intuitively and creatively. Striving for perfection in a pose or sequence misses the point entirely, there is no such thing. Every Body is literally unique, no two are the same. So how can two poses ever be the same?  What is perfection? A subjective abstract concept. My perfect is your horrific. 

Our yoga practice is an art and a beautiful metaphor for our lives. When we give ourselves permission to get messy on our mats, to feel into the practice and be guided creatively and intuitively, we’re more able to allow ourselves to be guided intuitively in our lives, to allow ourselves to be messy, no longer even considering Perfection, letting go of any notion entirely of a thing being anything in particular and simply allowing it to be. Immune to the criticism or rejection of others and only thinking entirely of our creative happiness. Evolving and Flowing, perfectly imperfect.

Happy practising !

Namaste.