Flexibility and Strength

How do you define yourself?

It seems that most people define themselves by their limitations. "This is what I can't do"..."I am not able to do this..." We go through the motions of our lives, through the minutes of our days with our limitations hanging above us. This lack of self-esteem, which it is, allows for us to be intimidated, to be anxious, to be scared. It becomes our truth, it strains our present, and it diminishes our dreams, our future... It is as subtle as it is overt.

You take an average person and place them in the context of a yoga class. They are thinking, "Oh shit, I can't do warrior 3, please don't let us have to do warrior 3 today..." I remember when we would get to the inversion part of a class and I would be sweating already, "I can't do handstand, I can't do handstand"...And so I never did.

But I can. I was practicing yoga for a decade before I really ever got the idea of "pulling in from your mid line" and exactly what that meant. Yoga just begins in a classroom - It is merely your first step. You put yourself in uncomfortable and strange postures. You get to a place where you begin to burn, where you start to shake. So do you back down? Do you try and get back to comfort immediately? Do you avoid the situation? Or do you match it? Can you raise it? Can you find the strength of your essence, from your mid line, to pull from? Everything we do on a mat is a reflection of how we deal outside. When relationship problems arise, when the bills come flooding in, when bad things happen...Where are we flexible, and where is our strength?

What you do in yoga is just training yourself for life. Do you run away? Do you avoid, do you back down, shut off, become passive? Or will you rise up, step up, and take your nows to a whole new level? Every moment we have, we are given a choice. A choice of how we intend to live, what this life even means to us.

We can choose where we need to draw on our flexibility.

We can choose where we pull and direct our strength.

Everyday we face real situations where these choices exist. One of my dearest friends just broke up with her boyfriend. A couple, who lived together, who often talked of marriage, finally awoke to the fact that they saw different lives for their futures, lives that were directed by different religious beliefs (It's always so shocking for people who never thought they had any until they start talking about raising children...) Another friend of mine was like, "What's the big deal, right?" Well, for some people, it's not. They can choose to be flexible and have that be their strength when things like this come up in relationships. For my friend, her religion is infused with her identity and from day one he knew that it was her intention to one day have children and raise them with that. He was always cool with it...until one day. So, it is a huge hard thing for her to draw on that strength of what path she wants to go down, and end the relationship.

Flexibility and Strength.

I have always dated boys and men who were not Jewish, and that was all fine and cool up until a year ago, most likely because being Jewish hadn't meant a whole lot to me and I never ever thought or dreamed of getting married and having children. But, uh...that's changed. I have to think about these things now, to some degree, because if I were to love and have a long relationship with someone who wanted to, let's say, have a completely atheist household, would I wind up compromising my soul and identity to maintain a relationship where I had to suppress part of myself or couldn't share my spirituality with my love or my family? I wouldn't just limit my choices of who to date to only Jewish men...My father was not born a Jew and he and my mother always made things work. I do think at this stage in my life, that I need to find a partner who is on some parallel spiritual path and seeking out self-knowledge. Otherwise, where are relationships leading to? An ending. And who needs any more sad breakups...

Flexibility - Where we are open to life dancing through us.

Strength - Where we name our non-negotiable values and be true to them.

How can we define ourselves not with limitations but with pure possibility? Not by saying "I can't do it!" But even by changing the conversation to "I haven't done it yet, but I am on my way." By acknowledging our true selves. Which is so much more - so beautiful and so much stronger and clearer than any fake limitation we place upon ourselves. When we realize that, that is when we have the clarity, the ability to meet the occasion, and to rise above it with grace with passion and with complete self-esteem.