my teacher says “all self improvement is doomed, because all self improvement begins in self loathing.”
Here is what she means: if you try to get into a yoga pose for the first time and you are intent on doing it perfectly, the body itself will prevent you. you may try to straighten your leg, only to find that this brings your pelvis out of a square position. or you may find that you try to strain forward to reach your toes, only to bring the belly away from the thighs and shorten the spine– making you further from your goal the more you reach for it.
the body makes these adjustments to prevent you from injury. your muscles could not take the strain of doing something perfectly the first time. if you were to push through these adjustments and insist on forcing the leg straight, forcing the pelvis square, forcing your hands to your toes, you would likely get hurt. but the body is wise and good. and if we listen to it we will not get hurt.
the mind is the same as the body and so it is also wise and good. if you are not practiced enough to hold your discomfort, the mind will find ways to protect you from pain: the mind will deflect blame onto others, the mind will project, the mind will justify you in your behavior. the mind does all these things not because it is bad, but because it is wise; because the mind, like the body, knows it cannot take the strain of doing something perfectly the first time it is asked to.
you cannot improve yourself on a set timeline. you cannot say: i will be a better person in six months to a year. you have to trust your body-mind to be your teacher, and trust that it knows the correct pace at which you can heal.
when you allow yourself to be as you are, and to take care of the body-mind you have, to nourish your needs as they are (instead of as what you want them to be), to allow yourself to exist without applying force, you will organically get better. the instinctive things you do to protect yourself from malnourishment and and from shame and from fear and from vulnerability and from wounds and from the past will fall away on their own. because you won’t need protection anymore.
