Making the Leap From Impossible to Possible

In several yoga classes of throughout the years, I have developed a pattern that I have become aware of this month. It goes like this: I watch the yoga instructor show us a pose, and then show us the advanced variation of the pose. They say something like: "You can balance on one foot and hold your body parallel over the floor or...you can do that AND grab your other foot, pull it over your head and tickle your ear with your toes while wrapping your other arm behind you in a prayer position." At some point, my mind would disengage from what the instructor was saying. I was still watching, but was distanced a little, amazed at what shape was possible with a human body and then I would say something like "Maybe next year" or "Yeah, right!" making light of my belief that there was no way in hell that my body would do that. Ever.

 

Something like this?

Now I have written before about how careful I am to know my body's limits and not push them to go somewhere that might cause injury. I am speaking about something else entirely when I say that I have limited myself by not even trying new poses (or new things in life) by just declaring that it was impossible.

Impossible. An interesting word. If you give it some belief and a little space, the word can be made into "I'm possible." When we see something as a possibility, we create space to have it happen. And rather you have viewed it as such before or not, space is growth.

I recently fell in love with a very challenging (for me) form of yoga called Vinyasa. It is a fast paced class, with several balance and strength building poses. Basically, you sweat a lot. Or I do. My first Vinyasa class was with a treasured teacher of mine, Dolly Stavros. She was showing us how we could move faster through a sun salutation flow by jumping from a forward bend into a push up and vice versa. And immediately, I zoned out a little saying, "Sure. Maybe next year."

"Why not now?" she asked me.

I had to pause. Gulp. "I don't know, I just have never tried and I don't think I have the strength." A mat length is a long way to lift the rest of your body while balanced on your hands.

"Sure you do!" she coaxed.

Dolly walked me through step by step what to do with my feet to get them from between my hands to extended out in a push up. And yes, it did occur to me a couple of times that I might fall on my stomach.

"Okay now you try it." She said.

I was willing to try.

"Wait," Dolly said, "Before you try, close your eyes and visualize yourself doing it. If you can see it, you can do it."

That's some huge life advice right there. I closed out my doubt by closing my eyes and saw myself leaping backwards, pressing my legs back into space and catching myself on my toes. The first time you attempt something new like that, there is a lot of unknown. And you have got to be comfortable enough with the unknown to try. I could see it, so I mustered up all of my strength and pushed into my hands and it happened! I didn't land on my stomach, I caught myself on my toes in a plank (push up) position and wooped and giggled.

The rest of that class, through many leaps back and forth on my mat, I began to be aware of how many times I had just passed opportunities by writing them off as impossible. If I did it this often in yoga class, how often did it happen in the rest of my life? My practice on the mat was just a tiny refection of the rest of my world. The tiny shift in my perception to consider something as an option for me was actually huge. It was a beautiful reminder of how we limit ourselves by our own thinking. Because I wasn't even willing to go there in my mind at first, there was no way my body could do the pose. It wasn't my body that was limiting me, it was my mind. This relates off the mat as well: it is not the world keeping you from doing something, it is yourself. For whatever reason, we hold ourselves back, we draw the box of how big we can live, how much we can have, how far we can go, how much we can earn, even how much love we can accept. Self imposed limits, all of them. The wonderful thing about self imposed limits is that they can change. With internal work, we can re-set our patterns and our beliefs. Each of us is creating our own reality. And when we accept and embrace this, absolutely anything is possible. We can redirect our thinking, change our conditioning, and turn impossible into I'm possible.


 

 

 

 

My invitation to you is to examine your self-imposed limits. What is something you want but distance yourself from with the word impossible? If you haven't allowed yourself to visualize it, create space for that. Take time to see what you want happening and imaginaing what that would feel like. At some point when visualizing living bigger, we run up against ourselves putting up obstacles in one form or another. And that's where the work begins. When we find that we aren't comfortable with having our dreams as a reality for some reason and identify that reason. It is our own glass-ceiling. Rather we feel we are not worthy, or someone had told us something about ourselves that we believed that contradicts having what we want now, or perhaps we are not open to change, or we run up against fear, whatever it is - its an opportunity to grow. Be gentle with yourself when you find that thing that holds you back, it's not wrong, it is just one way of thinking that has served you up until now. Self awareness allows us to create another reality by changing our thinking.

 

 

"Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning." - Ghandi