There is No Success or Failure

I joined the first of an animal flow movement class today taught by my dear friend and Wonderland community member Shanie. Shanie is passionate about teaching people how to inhabit their bodies fully using new pathways of movement.

I wanted to share some insights I had during this animal flow class. But first a bit of background: I was not a physical child. I didn't grow up in an active family. I was that kid in school who was chosen last for every team sport. In fact the other kids used to fight to not have me on their team..

So you can imagine that I grew up internalizing a lot of negative messages and stories about myself, my lack of abilities and my body image. I used to feign illness before every school sports day. In high school I actually researched the details of a painful knee condition and forged sick notes from my Mum about it, to get me out of sports class.

(Interestingly, in later life I've ended up with ambiguous knee pain for no apparent reason, and whilst I can’t say for sure that it’s related to the fabricated condition, we do now know that the power of belief can heal and worsen our health)

Certainly, the chronic stress I used to feel was responsible for a 15-yr chronic back pain condition, although I didn't know this at the time. And this gave me the perfect excuse not to exercise. Of course I gained weight and the heavier I got, the more the pain increased, and the more I told myself it was pointless to exercise. I was innocently piling one limiting belief on top of another for decades.

One of my very first mentor’s Jamie Catto, told me about an audio book called ‘Healing Back Pain’ by Dr. John Sarno. It's a controversial book and but nonetheless, many of thousands of people have been healed of chronic pain conditions simply by reading this book. I'll do a separate post about this because I feel it could be helpful for anyone suffering with a pain condition to see the mind-body connection.

Two weeks after reading this book, I was free of that chronic pain condition - even though nothing had actually changed, no surgery, no specific treatment or technique was employed. The only that shifted was my mind.

It wasn't until my forties - prompted by a deep sense of discontent and lack of meaning in my life, that I left everything behind in the UK and started traveling - that I began a regular yoga practice. And now at the age of 47, I’ve just qualified as a yoga teacher.

It was a challenge for sure, I was twice the age and half as fit as almost everyone else on the course. Keeping up was not easy. I kept crashing into one limiting belief after another head-on, but just showed up every day regardless of the narrative in my head. Before I knew it, 28 days had passed and I received my certification with a profound sense of achievement. I never imagined this would have been possible 10 years ago.

So back to the animal flow class today; I noticed these old limiting beliefs and very inner critical narrative arise again. I found it super challenging to practice totally new pathways of movement, I felt like I couldn't follow the sequence at all. I noticed the “you're too old for this” thoughts circling my brain. I observed that hot feeling of shame arise, my face all scrunched up in confusion and exhaustion. Poor Shanie, with the patience of a saint, dealt beautifully with my whiny demeanor and exasperation.

At one point that hot, stinging feeling of tears formed behind my eyes as the old patterns of thought kept flowing through me, creating an uncomfortable felt-sense experience in my body.

In the past, I might have stormed out of that class in embarrassment. I almost certainly would have felt some shame for crying in front of people.

But with my present understanding of the 3 Principles behind life, I now just allow the full spectrum of thought and feeling to flow through me unimpeded. Instead of listening to these unhelpful messages my mind was making up, I just carried on with the class, doing what I could, making my best attempt, in the knowledge that it takes practice to become good at something.

And furthermore, if I don't become an expert at animal flow, it doesn't mean anything about me. It doesn't say anything about my value as a human. It sounds obvious right? And yet these unconscious interpretations often stop us from trying something new or taking risks.

One of, if not the primary reason why we suffer so much, is because we’ve forgotten the truth of who we are. There is the ‘psychological self’ which is just a bunch of stories and ideas about who I am and what I like. This is not who I am or who you are. I am not this body, not this personality, I am not this conditioned set of beliefs and opinions and ideas.

You and I are awareness itself. The neutral, ever present, non-judgmental backdrop upon which experience arises. With this experiential knowledge (rather than intellectual knowledge), I am free to just play in life. You are free to show up and try things and fail or succeed, or something in the middle, secure in the knowledge that who you are, your essence is untouched by failure or success. And in fact failure and success are just made up words. Really there is no such thing. There is just life unfolding.

You can let life live you. You can participate fully because this life is so short. Why let your limited, repetitive, habitual thinking get in the way of you trying, exploring, creating, and playing in life.

How about you give yourself permission to show up exactly as you are and allow life to express itself through you even if that means crying on a yoga mat. You cannot be harmed by emotions or thinking. But you can definitely suffer if you believe in them, or take them too seriously. And that's the beauty of understanding how experience is created; very quickly, you bounce back into balance and well-being, because it's always there just below thought. That’s the design of the human system - to swing back to homeostasis. You can trust in the design.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any comments or questions, or need some guidance to see your own innate well-being, leave a comment below or drop me an email.

With, love

Aly