ahimsa ~ non-harming, or you are perfect and whole, exactly as you are
A couple of weeks ago, I went shopping for a bra. In the midst of the uncertainty and opportunity that is my life right now, it was a sort of guilty pleasure. Bras are expensive, and for the most part, uncomfortable. They also always remind me of the pressure I feel to look a certain way, whether that pressure comes from within or without.
Even in the times I feel the best, and/or care the least, bra shopping always carries with it, at least for me, the implication that something is not quite right as it is. That I am some how not quite right. And then, it's a paradox - because at the same time, when I buy a bra, or more specifically, when I take a day, bike downtown, walk around stores by myself, look at the "buy two, get the third free" options at Claire's, sniff a bunch of body creams at Lush, and end up on the third floor of Nordstrom's buying a bra, I feel decadent, indulgent and satisfied. I feel pretty, somehow. Weird, I know. But it reminds me of being a kid, of being able to ground myself by being alone, going into NYC, shopping by myself, then taking the 66 bus home, going up to the third floor to where my bedroom was, and, with my new clothes, or earrings, or hat, telling myself, in the mirror, when I was sure no one was around, that I was actually kind of pretty. I was ok. I would be ok.
As a kid, I didn't really know why I always felt like I didn't fit in, like there was something wrong with me, like if I was only prettier, thinner, cooler, smarter, something...... then I would be happy. I just knew that was how I felt and that somehow I was getting that message. But I also knew that sometimes, in some moments, and most often when I had bought something new - a purple camouflage army jacket, a fancy piece of make-up - that for just an instant, in private, I actually thought I was good enough.
I have thought a lot about this in my years as a yoga student, teacher and therapist. I have become increasingly aware of the subtle and not so subtle pressures all around me to be something other than who I am. These are messages I receive from my conditioning and from my culture, particularly a culture obsessed with a particular standard of beauty - a consumerist, capitalist culture that preys on people's insecurities to sell products. And if the insecurity isn't already there, it can be created.
I had this experience on my recent bra shopping trip. As I was at the register ready to buy my new bra, the salesperson asked me if I had looked for a bra with padding. I laughed and said to her, "My goodness no! I'm already a double D, I don't think I need padding!" She smiled and said, "Well, it's actually because of how self-conscious women are of their nipples. They want to make sure they are never showing." Whoa. OK, I didn't even know that. I told her a funny story about my recent trip to India where I tried on a new silk salwar and couldn't help but notice that my nipples were very attentive to the material, and I just laughed and wondered how my very sweet and deferential tailor Shiva might be scandalized. But it never occurred to me to feel particularly ashamed or embarrassed - isn't that just a part of a woman's body?
But now I thought of that moment with my silk salwar in a different way. Should I have been more embarrassed? But even more than that, I thought, "Wow, there is yet another thing I should feel bad about, another object of attention for my self-doubt."
I came to work that day and told the story, saying again, what the hell else are we supposed to feel bad about? My beloved friend and student Shelagh laughed and shared with me a recent article she had read, on a website entitled, The Body is not an Apology, talking about this very subject. Yes! More and more things for us to be embarrassed about, just for being human.
I started thinking about all of the phrases we use like, "That shirt is really forgiving,"....of what? Do I need my clothing to forgive my body for being the way it is? Or, "She can get away with that, because she is ....thin, tall, young...." Really? I have to "pull one over" on someone to wear clothes that I feel good about?
Then I remembered that many years ago, one of my longtime students - now an experienced yoga teacher in her own right, Misha Kellner-Rogers, sent me a link to a documentary, saying, "I thought you would be interested in this, it is exactly what you always talk about." I opened up the link - it was to a documentary called "The Perfect Vagina." At first I thought, "Hmmmm, I don't know if I have ever, even once, talked about a vagina in yoga class." But I love Misha, and she was a dedicated students, so I trusted her insight and watched the documentary. Sure enough, it is all about women wondering and agonizing over whether or not their vaginas look "right," - often seeking plastic surgery to "correct" them. My mind was blown back then too. It had never occurred to me that my vagina should be compared to some "standard???" of vaginas?
And yet that is indeed the world we live in. So many ways for us to feel bad about ourselves. It's our hair, our body, our nipples, our vaginas, our sexuality, our choices, our experiences, our up-bringing, it is, seemingly, everything.
Recently I have come to see that this feeling of unworthiness extends even to our suffering.
Some of you saw on my facebook page last week that my family lost a dear friend who was 97 years old, but still full of life and spunk and energy. While we all knew she wouldn't live forever, for me there was still that feeling of shock and grief. I could feel the deep sadness in my body and heart, and yet there seemed to be a message too that maybe I shouldn't feel that way - that it was silly of me to grieve for someone who was very old, who had had a beautiful life that she lived until the very end without any significant health challenge or cognitive shifts, and who died very suddenly, without prolonged suffering.And yet I did grieve. But what else was in that grieving? The recent loss of my cat. All the change that is happening in my life. The feeling that somehow, at 97, as long as Tina was alive, then no one else - like my parents - could die, and now somehow, that gate had been opened. So the grief was much more complicated than the simple one to one reaction of event and associated suffering.In the week before Tina died, I had been spending a lot of time with a friend who was going through a particularly hard time following a break-up. He was feeling so sad, and so lost. Often when he talked he would say, "I only dated her for seven months, I know I shouldn't be this upset." But why not? Was it really just that loss? Or was it the recalled loss of his own parents several years ago, or the loss of youth as he approaches his 49th birthday, or the perceived loss of opportunity, or fear of a future alone? The pain was real, and the suffering was compounded by the feelings about the validity, or worthiness, of the suffering itself.
I asked him, "What if you didn't worry about whether you have the right to be in pain, so you could put your energy towards tenderness to yourself - simply because you are in pain?"
So, in the spirit of ahimsa, non-harming, I want to remind all of us that we are perfect and whole exactly as we are. Our nipples, our hair, our age, our changes, our suffering - it is all perfect. We can spend less time second guessing ourselves and more time loving ourselves, more time being tender toward what is. We can also do a better job at allowing one another to be in their own experience - if a person is suffering, we don't need to tell them why they shouldn't be, we can simply practice being with them in the experience they are having.
We can also make a commitment as a community to not perpetuate harm by buying into the ideals that are forced upon us in an insidious effort for us to consume. We don't have to make excuses for ourselves, or be forgiven by our clothing, or "get away" with feeling good about ourselves, or punish ourselves for the misstep of aging, or of eating, or of existing.
We are perfect and whole exactly was we are. I once learned from my dear friend Stephanie Sisson the quote, "God loves you just the way you are, but too much to let you stay that way."
Start with self love and acceptance. If there are changes to be made, let those come from the deepest desire of your heart to live a life of integrity, ease and joy, not from the conditioning that tells you that you are not good enough. You are. We are.
We are all in this together.With love and light,molly