Fourth Form of Madness

My favourite kind of learning (aka unlearning) is the type that happens when you not even thinking of it or focusing on it, not asking for it so to speak. When I first started hot yoga I wasn’t a great big fan. I don’t really like the heat, which is not good when you live in one of the hottest parts of the world, but I endured it. To be honest that is what I felt I did for a long time with hot yoga, I endured it but it was quite the mental exercise. As I sat and watched all these negative thoughts parade around my existence, I suddenly kind of got it! I began to see that this is what I have been doing with life in some way, enduring it, bearing it whilst all the while carrying around all these negative beliefs. When people are asked how they want to live their life you don’t hear them usually respond “I want to endure it’. So why was I?

This was the tricky part, why was I doing this? Hot yoga helped me out again with a bit of a visual aid, my legs in shorts of all things. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with weight issues. When I was growing up, I was always the kid that got called “fatso” or “blubber ball”. I thought I was beautiful but then I was a kid what would I know :-). I was put on diets and encouraged to be like everyone else. Fast forward a few years to sweet sixteen and it turns out to be not so sweet with one of my nannas dying of cancer, my aunty dying of breast cancer and my other nanna suffering a major bout of mental illness. I spiralled into an out of control eating disorder, which ironically at the time, I think I started to actually feel like I could gain some control over my life. There are many rabbit holes we can all fall into as we navigate mind, this is a particularly deep and unpleasant hole. I spent many years of living the mental agony that is anorexia, and it was during this period I taught myself, and unfortunately I’m a good learner, that life was to be endured.

Then today in hot yoga, I found myself in down dog looking at my bare legs as I was wearing shorts. Hot yoga has brought me to shorts due to the heat. Now I try never to wear shorts in public, even in my uber skinny mysore days, I rarely wore shorts as I have loads of dimples and lumps and bumps for going from a larger size down to a littler size all to quickly. My thinking was along the lines “I can’t wear shorts, I’m not skinny enough, I have lumps and bumps”. But here I was staring at the two most gorgeous dimply, lumpy, bumpy legs in creation and I felt so in love with myself that I was starting to wonder if I had hung upside down for far too long. However, back in an upright position, settling in for a nice, still meditation helped along by staring out of the window at nature, one of my favourite friends, I suddenly get as my mantra “Let yourself be magnificent”. Well this is new. I never have used a mantra like this before. So I give it a go and it suits me really well. I feel so at ease there in my shorts and my dimples and I start to feel that at any point in the past I could have felt this way, it is just that I have chosen now.

Afterwards, as I am reflecting on the class and this new found love for my legs (and the rest of me and life) I realised that for a long time I had held the belief that life must be perfect, that nothing bad or more aptly put, life-like, must be happening to you in order to be able to love your life, to love yourself and to quite literally shine. Clearly this belief was wrong and as I relish in my new magnificence, I send a pray of gratitude for this wonderful lesson of unlearning and to my teacher, that through her wisdom, brought us the hot yoga experience.