PERFECTION: what is it? and how to attain?  That is the question that I am always striving to answer.

No matter how good something is, I’m still trying to improve it until its great.  My mom says that I have always been like this.  And it’s nothing that someone else has put on me from childhood; no one has ever expected it of me, its just been self-inflicted.  Maybe I liked the way it feels to have everything just-so; to look perfect, according to everyone else’s perceptions.

“A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone.  It doesn’t struggle to be different from a rose.  It doesn’t have to.  It is different.  And there’s room in the garden for every flower.  You didn’t have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else’s on earth,  It just is,  You are unique because you were created that way. Look at the children in kindergarten.  They’re all different without trying to be.  As long as they’re unselfconsciously being themselves, they can’t help but shine.  It’s only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted.”
-Marianne Williamson

Compete, competition….to present oneself the finest form, and the best way possible.   Always trying, so hard to get everything perfect, to be better than others.  I know in yoga, I strive to be the best I can be.  It is hard, especially for me, with all the balance poses and core strengthening (what is this, I have a core??), and endurance. It’s all very fatiguing, but after a class, I’d be on a euphoric adrenaline high, and I would go power walking all along the beautiful trails in my neighborhood.

Yoga gives me a sense of accomplishment, a physical workout while incorporating the spiritual aspect; I’m familiar with some yoga poses through cheerleading- they have both the same structural movements.   I was on an All-Star competition cheerleading squad back in high school, and our goal of course was to win!  Be better than the other squads…again with the competition.

Since I do have a traumatic brain injury, it causes balance problems that yoga does help, although I find myself putting forth extra effort just to prove that I can accomplish the pose, the speed, the harder optional position.  To prove to who? To prove to the other people in my yoga classes, but more importantly to prove to myself that I still got “it”.  The yoga practices also feel like physical therapy.  In Physical Therapy, we would actually do poses and hold them to increase body strength.

As humans, we need to come to the realization that we are not perfect, we have flaws. Going back to Adam and Eve in the garden- we all make mistakes.  It’s not a bad thing to strive toward perfection, just realize that we often will not be able to attain that image of perfection in our own head.  Remember to just be thankful and appreciate everything that you do have now.  It’s fairly easy to be appreciative when you know how quickly you can lose it all.