Your Imperfect is Perfect

The celebration continues! This last week I graduated from a 800 hour Yoga Therapy Teacher Training program with the Niroga Institute, an amazing organization. It was two of the most transformative years of my life. As I move forward into this next stage of my life's work I am looking at what comes next.

In chapter 18 of the Bhagavad Gita it says, “All Mankind is born for perfection and each shall attain it will he but follow his nature's duty. Now we shall hear how a man may become perfect, if he devotes himself to the work which is natural to him...A man's own natural duty, even if it seems imperfectly done, is better than work not naturally his own even if this is well performed. For all action is involved in imperfection, like fire in smoke.” I take this to mean that one should always be authentic even if it is not what society considers perfect. We are perfect in our imperfection.

Your imcomplete is complete

I am not yet fully complete in my abilities and will never be so, since I am continuously living and learning. I see the ways that I do things that are less that what I consider the all-time “best” way to be doing them, but I try my personal best and continue to follow a path that feels right to me. This is true with being a Yoga Therapist. I know there is so much more for me to learn and I sometimes do things in my work that I see later weren't the most refined solutions to the problem. I keep trying and striving to help others heal themselves, though. I do my work as best I can and then let the universe decide what the outcomes are. It is an act of non-attachment and karma yoga (the yoga of action). Maybe I could do other work better but it wouldn't be my calling.

Since, I find it very healing to relax my self-criticism and remind myself that I am doing the right thing even if I am not doing it perfectly I imagine these concepts will also be helpful for my clients. I see people in my yoga therapy practice who get frustration with themselves or the practice of yoga because they aren't able to do the poses in some idealized manner. I try to reassure them that what they are doing is very beneficial to their health and just the act of trying, whether a pose is done well or not, is a great act.