Adapting and "Making s__t up"

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This past weekend I had the honor of attending a workshop for yoga teachers on Adaptive yoga. I am grateful for the shared and passionate vulnerability. Being vulnerable is one of the most beautiful, wonderful and powerful things about being human. Taking a step forward is what I do after I fall. Some people don’t, some people cannot. The step they can take is the courage to come alive in a different body.

One of the beautiful people I met this weekend has stepped forward in a unique and valuable way. His journey after being hit by a car eventually brought him to creating a nonprofit for Adaptive yoga. Yoga has been a blessing in his recovery and driven him to take that step. When yoga was first suggested to him, he saw it as another obstacle. When he eventually tried yoga, he found it unraveling the opposite. He felt whole and accepted. He inspires me to try harder, to do more. He inspires me to be more fully myself. That is what I see him doing.

I think it’s like a mirror reflecting our own true and deep nature when we are inspired by others.

I gave a lot of thought to something that one of the women who came to share her practice shared. She was born with two fingers on each hand and three toes. She has since had a double amputation of her legs and lives with a lot of chronic pain. When someone said “you inspire me” her response was, “what does that mean?, what are you going to go out and do?” This made me wonder what I’m going to do with my own inspiration in hearing someone else’s story.

Hopefully I will create something, maybe something wonderful. It might be art, or it might be giving energy to a worthy cause. It might simply be an enlivening of spirit that gets carried forward.

The lead teacher Liza’s words that we “have the creative freedom to make ship up” really stuck with me. That’s fantastic, and no one ever got started without it. I get stuck in the rules and doing it right, don’t you? In dance and in yoga I have often felt tied to traditions and only fully myself when I allow myself the freedom to be creative. With all the respect for the foundations laid, I am liberated to make shit up. Thank goodness for all of those before me that did! My background and experience differ from those before me.

My creative process and the outcome can really only grow with the full use of everything that I am.