Personal essays
On self-assessment and improvement
The mirror
Saturday the yoga class was only about half full. There was plenty of room to spread out and so I found myself in the second row with no one in front of me.
And that meant that I was right in front of me.
I spent an uncomfortable forty-five minutes with my image in the mirror letting me know that I hadn’t made the gains I thought I had.
In front of me and to my left was the instructor. It was great to have a clear view of her. I do much of yoga with my eyes closed, but when the instructor is switching things up or introducing something we haven’t seen before, it’s great to be able to see them.
In front of me and to my right was a young woman I hadn’t seen before. Her movements were slow, deliberate, and precise.
Between these two demonstrations of how each movement should be done was my reflection not quite bending enough or pointing my arms or legs where they should be positioned. And the look on the face looking back at me, my face, was disappointment.
Progress
I started regularly attending yoga classes a little over a year ago. I found it frustrating. I could barely get into these positions and had trouble keeping up.
“Give it six months,” people told me.
So I did.
I don’t even go to the real yoga class. I go to the “gentle” yoga class. There are four or five teachers who I really like so I tend to sign up for their classes.
Recently one of them mentioned that she is offering a bridge class for people who want to bridge from gentle yoga to root yoga.
The guy behind me shook his head and quietly said, “it’s very hard. They do a lot of that dog thing.”
Despite that, I was thinking that maybe I’d try it. I’ve been feeling really good in class lately. I enjoy the flow and often close my eyes once we’ve been through the first repetition of whichever Sun A routine the teacher has chosen for that day.
Bridging to the next level sounds fun.
And then I saw myself in the mirror.
Tai Chi
I took Tai Chi for nearly twenty years and loved it. Our group kind of fell apart during COVID and my current gym doesn’t offer Tai Chi so I tried yoga instead.
When I joined the Tai Chi group there was an older woman who could barely move.
The teacher would demonstrate a movement and what she did barely resembled what we’d been shown.
But no one said anything. No one thought anything.
That’s not true. We admired her.
She’d had a stroke. Over the years she slowly developed her movement and her body started to do what she asked it to do.
Her efforts and improvement stay with me.
She never could do an entire movement and it was never smooth and it never mattered.
Each week she showed up and each week she moved with the rest of us for an hour and a half.
Self
I talked about this in a keynote I recently gave and the lessons I hoped to derive from this. And yet - I still need to work on learning the lesson myself.
We’re all taught the Golden Rule. The rule says that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
We need to also learn the variant that reverses this. We need to be as kind to ourself as we are to others.
It would never have occurred to me to criticize or look twice at Geraldine and her inability to follow the instructor.
Why do I look at myself with disappointment when I am not bending to the side as cleanly and deeply as the instructor?
In a way, the mirror was helpful. At first blush I saw my shortcomings. On second consideration I see how I see my shortcomings. Each needs to be worked on independently, but it will be easier for me to keep working on my form in yoga if I use the image in the mirror to make the helpful corrections without judgement.
It’s the same thing I’ve done with others as a teacher for decades.
We must treat ourselves with the patience and kindness that we extend to others.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 296. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe