My new favorite saying – “What it feels like is more important than what it looks like.” This is a quote from my yoga teacher today, about half way through my 230-hour yoga teacher training. It applies to yoga and it also applies so much to LIFE. What it feels like is more important than what it looks like.
I’ve been to a lot of “Super-cardio-yoga” classes where there were definitely a lot of participants who cared a great deal about what the yoga poses looked like. What a different experience to do yoga when you care most about what it FEELS like. By the way, the best thing to wear to do yoga when all you care is what it feels like is your pajamas. Yoga pants are so much more about how it looks that now they’re the fashionable choice of moms everywhere, and for the most part we’ve given up the ruse that we wear them to do yoga in.
Yoga when you care what it feels like is mindful. About ease and developing strength and challenging yourself, not comparing yourself to the person next to you. It’s you and your body, getting to know each other - limits, edges, proportions, and all. It’s not about the perfect warrior pose, it’s about how it effing feels to stand like a warrior in YOUR body.
And wow, in life. What it feels like is more important than what it looks like. How it looks like we’re getting by is just a scratch on the surface of how we’re actually doing, inside, and what it feels like to be alive, to face challenges, to do hard things (or to not do them).
Just had a baby? What it feels like is so much more important than what it looks like. It feels big and important and heavy and sometimes painful and like a lot of responsibility. We feel all this pressure to look like we’ve got it together, mamas. Let that pressure go. Focus on what it feels like. Ask for help when you need it. Tell someone how you’re feeling. Maybe it’s someone you know in your life who is a great listener and supporter. Maybe it’s a therapist. Let someone know. When we say what we’re feeling it becomes real for us. Another quote I love is “I know what I think when I hear what I say.” Thoughts are running around up there in our brains, and we might not even be consciously aware of them until we say them out loud.
In a relationship that doesn’t feel right any more? What it feels like is so much more important than what it looks like. We want people to think we’re in a good relationship because we think it reflects well (or poorly) on us. What “reflects” on us is others’ wishes for their own lives or insecurities. We don’t need to bear that weight. What does it feel like? Getting in touch with our inner world tells us so much of what we need to know about what to do. Our reality is subjective. It has always been. What we feel is our reality. Rather than discounting it or devaluing it, let’s give it the credit it deserves. What it feels like (whatever it is) is more important than what it looks like.
