Failure is Relative
Failure is relative, my mantra this month, feels like tailor-made for me as I am forced to reevaluate my personal practice. Still nursing a shoulder and bicep issue for the past several months, which has felt like a lifetime, I’m reacquainting myself with shapes that had always felt like being able to sit with an old friend. As I like to remind my clients and students, an injury is your greatest teacher, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Although some would argue that sometimes one doesn’t want or need these types of lessons. Nothing places your own set of fragilities and human limitations center stage quite like an injury.
Truthfully I’ve been very whiny during this rehabilitation process because it has made me face what might have brought about the injury but also facing the reality that my 54-year-old body is no longer what my body had been even 10 years ago. As they say, time is the equalizer, and age the neutralizer. Nothing neutralizes or levels the playing field quite like the aging process. There is no amount of money, no amount of awards, no amount of physical beauty or strength, no amount of intelligence that can prevent the inevitable…aging and facing the limitations of what it is to age.
Even though I know I’m in great shape for someone my own age, I’ve still had to swallow this harsh reality about my own age and my body’s age. With this new reckoning, I’ve come back to my practice using this mantra as a beacon to help guide me through the morass of my ego and my emotions. It has been a process like much else in life, sometimes graceless in my efforts. As I achieve more mobility without the pain and I am able to do more of my practice, I try to keep in check the internal mechanism that is there to constantly evaluate my current practice with my practice of before.
As I teach group classes again, I keep reminding my students to be OK that their bodies have likely changed during this challenging and mind-bending year. And to bring that greater awareness the practice teaches us along with a fair amount of patience and compassion. As I say this to my students, I say it to myself each time I step on to the mat as I continue to nurse my injury.