You Don’t Have To Do Everything Right.
The first part of the Invocation to Patanjali
When I was recording the first session on Patanjali’s Yoga Sūtra for my new series, Putting It All In Context, I started with a chant; it is an invocation to Patanjali that is traditionally offered at the beginning of Yoga Sūtra study. I have chanted this invocation literally a thousand times or more. It is a chant that my first teacher insisted we learn and I even received special tutoring on it so I could do it correctly. What I am saying is - I know this chant. But what happened was, I got about three or four lines in and my mind went blank. Like, empty space where my thoughts used to be. The camera was rolling, the student attending live was sitting there expectantly, and I had nothing. It was gone.
After some stammering and attempts to quickly see if I had a written copy handy (I did not), I had to give up. You can watch it all unfold if you enroll in the course - it’s still in there!
Spontaneously forgetting the line was embarrassing because I was sitting in the teacher’s seat and that comes with an expectation that I know my stuff. And it was frustrating because…I actually do frigging know this chant! All of these thoughts and feelings were cascading around me, while at the same time, I was aware that how I handle this public mental glitch could offer an example of How to Make A Mistake within the realm of a Yoga practice.
One thing that I was taught early on in chanting, in particular, is that it is better to chant it out loud imperfectly than to sit hunched over and chant perfectly but without conviction. If you make a mistake, sit up tall and just keep going - none of this self-conscious stumbling around or giggling or making excuses. All that was seen as indulgent and unnecessary. It is a teaching that I have carried into my life beyond chanting. In that moment however, I didn’t perfectly embody making my mistake with grace or without some self indulgent attempts to explain what was happening. It actually was kind of messy.
As I reflect on that incident, what interests me is that I wanted to chant the invocation perfectly and then, when that wasn’t working out, I wanted to make a mistake perfectly. Oh my. What a tight, tiny box to put myself in!
I have a very dear and brilliant friend who often refers to “the overculture” when we are talking about how we might be or react in a situation. She means white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, ableist capitalism when she says that. It is her way of saying that we come by these patterns of reaction honestly. That tiny, tight box of wanting to do everything perfectly, including making mistakes, has its roots in lessons that we have all learned in a culture that tells us that we are supposed to be perfect: forever young, slim, in great physical shape, rich and on and impossibly on). Perfectionism is one of the characteristics of White Supremacy.
And, it is in direct contradiction to what is taught in Yoga.
The very first word of the Yoga Sūtra is atha - now. For me, one big implication of atha is: you have everything you need to do this. I have everything I need to do this. Right now. Not later, when I have it all figured out or when I can do everything perfectly but right now, as in, with all my current imperfections. When I truly believe that I do not have to do everything right, I feel the walls of that tiny, tight box start to dissolve. I feel it in my body: it’s not intellectual. When I feel this ease in my body as I let go of a long held belief, like I have to be able to do everything perfectly, this is liberation.
To come back to my friend’s point of view, I have found it very helpful ask - who benefits when we keep ourselves in that tiny, tight box? I assure you that it isn’t an accident that we have been taught these things - someone is benefitting but I am confident that it is not you or me. In the moment, asking this question - who benefits when I feel this tight contraction - can be such a useful reframing of what is actually happening.
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I want to add that learning to chant correctly IS important - I am not advocating for carelessness in chanting. Although the Invocation to Patanjali is not a Vedic chant so the rules of chanting do not apply to it, Vedic chants have been taught in a very particular way throughout history for a reason. The Vedas are not a product of a human mind (they are what is called śruti or received teachings) and they have been passed down from teacher to student in the same way for millennia. There is something wildly arrogant about deciding that I will be the one person who will change this tradition after thousands of years; I will be the one who breaks this thread that connects to the past and to the future. Don’t know about you but I actually do not want to be that person.
Our work as students of Yoga is to practice as if our lives depend on it AND hold it all lightly. Perfectionism is different than taking care to learn well within a particular tradition. We could even see it as just another facet of sloppiness and a particularly destructive one at that. For me, the word reverence contains all of it - care deeply and hold lightly. It is the opposite of perfectionism.
What are your experiences around perfectionism? Specifically as a student of Yoga or anywhere in your life?
