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Yoga class. Hot, sweaty (it is hot yoga, after all), so hard! So wonderful!

We are working on Dancer pose, a difficult standing balance, where you grab onto the leg behind you and attempt to lift it up to the ceiling as you slowly lower your torso forward. It’s hard, and I am thrilled to notice that I’m getting better at it. I can see my foot behind my head! I can stay balanced for the duration! I puff up with pride, pleased with myself, with my practice, with my improvement.

And then.

Half-moon pose. Another balancing pose. This time one leg straight behind, hips and shoulders facing the side wall, one arm on the ground. Your extended leg and torso make one long line, your balancing leg and bottom arm are parallel to one another. I can’t do it. On one side in particular, I cannot do it. I lose balance, fall out of it. Try again. Lose balance, feel like I’m going to tumble backwards, fall out of it. Try again. Fail again.

Humbled.

And so it goes.

Victories and defeats. Wins and losses. Successes and failures.

We clean the sink to shiny new-ness, while dust bunnies dance around our feet.

So what’s a human to do?

Celebrate the wins, sure, but don’t get too attached, because if we do, then the next failure is going to hurt more. Perhaps the recipe is in joyfully allowing the success, celebrating, revelling, but not letting it mean much more than that. Laughing when we fall out of half-moon, recognizing there is learning to be done, and then trying again.

It’s easy enough to do in yoga class, a little tougher when it comes to so-called more important things. But if we practice, we’ll get better, right?

I heard somewhere (wish I could remember where? who?), that we must hold a relationship in the palms of our open hands, as if holding a little bird, not grip onto it, squeezing the life out of it. I think maybe this is good advice for almost anything in life. If we can hold on to our pursuits, our successes, our passions, with open palms, we give them room to breathe, to change, to fall apart, to take flight, to be brilliant. If we can relinquish our identification with our success, then we can risk failing, which really means learning, after all.

A light touch seems to me, to be a beautiful approach to life.

What is it that stops us from risking? Fear, in a word. Of failing, of what people think, of succeeding. But what if we released ourselves from the weight of it? What if we could remember that who we are is not what we do, is not our success or failure, is not our ability to do Dancer, our inability to do Half-moon. Who we are is more than that, deeper than that, lighter than that. Take the pressure off, play, explore, try something. Fail at something. Laugh at yourself as you fall out of Half-moon, and laugh again as you execute a beautiful Dancer. Then go home, shower, and try it all again tomorrow.