Thursday, February 11, 2010

Perfect practice

Can we ever have the "perfect practice"?  If so what is that, what does it look like, what does it feel like?  I am a person who is always striving to improve.  I want to be a better mother, a better yoga teacher, better belly dancer, a better prenatal teacher and just a better person.  This conflicts with being present sometimes.  I want to accept myself today for who I am and how I am, how I am feeling, how I am teaching how I am practicing. 

I am the constant student I flip flop from one thing to another and always back again.  I have been belly dancing on and off for about 6 years and this has improved my yoga practice immensely.  I have learned through belly dancing to practice with joy.  I have learned different ways that my body can move and flow.  I also love the costumes but that has little place in yoga.  In music I also flip flop back and forth from learning to play the guitar to leaving it be, to getting really into my hand drums and leaving them for months at a time, to really getting the hang of my zills (finger cymbals) and letting them go.  But again the music has helped me pick really great music for yoga and has helped me find and enjoy music that I may otherwise not have listened to.  I repeat it again, bringing more joy into my life.

I have been teaching yoga on and off for about 6 years now and am currently embarking on an additional teacher training but will it ever be enough.  I will finally be certified but now I am looking at what the next teacher training will be.  I want to train in India with Vishnu and Chetena a couple whose birth I attended 3 years ago.  I love their approach but it will be expensive and "un-necessary".  I want to attend another teacher training at the ashram in Quebec that I love but again it will be expensive and would mean a month away from my family.  It seems sometimes a matter of need versus want.  I don't need to learn more I just want more.  I have found in my personal experience that it is not enough for me to learn and to do something well, I need to perfect it and be able to teach it to others.  It just never ends.  Maybe that's what I love so much about yoga, between the physical aspects and the philosophy as well as the meditative,  yoga has so many layers that I can never learn it all.  Maybe my practice will never be perfect, maybe it will be but this is the lesson - it is as good as it is going to get today, in the present moment where I am now - maybe that is the perfection?

The improvement that I make in my learning enriches me and my life but I can't help but question... will it ever be enough.  Will I ever learn to be present and accept... or will I always be searching for more.

Om Shanti
Jenni

3 comments:

  1. Maybe it as much about perfection as it is about evolution. It would be pretty boring if we didn't continue to learn more in life, open our hearts/souls to new experiences and concepts. Maybe striving for perfection is being too hard on yourself.... perhaps if you look at it as an ongoing journey you would feel more present with it and less in judgement of yourself.

    Of course you want more:) Isn't that natural? It is your passion and if you were simply teaching all of the time and not refueling yourself, you would probably burn out and feel less fed in the soul.

    My mother taught yoga for over 30 years and she was continuously going to various yoga/dance/meditation (countless other) trainings and retreats. At this point in her life she has experienced so much variety and has taken what has been most important to her or resonated the most to her from all of these experiences to develop her own style of yoga that she now calls Earthwyse Yoga. Cool huh?

    Enjoy the beauty of your journey! From what I see in your FB status' it looks like you do:)

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  2. A woman once told me that yoga is good for the soul, but nothing makes you feel more like a woman than belly dancing ;)

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  3. I don't think wanting to learn more should be seen as a deficit! As for going to India, why wouldn't you want to do that? Life is about experience, about evolving and that is a continual process. I don't think you 'flip flop' I think you have varied skills that come into focus at different times in your life. You are in harmony with your inner voice and you seek the tool that best expresses that voice at that time. You aren't constrained by one tool, that is a positive, just as you aren't constrained by one emotion.

    All of this learning sounds wonderful. If you feel that it is too much, if you feel you need to stay still then you can always do that but don't feel that a lust for life, for learning and experience are a character flaw!

    I'm in awe of your energy, determination and commitment to your path. Plus I'd love to learn yoga from you : ) You rock x

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