Last weekend I did a 3 day Ashtanga workshop with Kino MacGregor. It was both empowering and embarrassing. Well… maybe “humbling” is a better word.

During the intervals between classes, I found myself sitting on my mat observing some advanced yogis around me push up into handstand. Almost everyone in the room was able to do full lotus, but I couldn’t. It was frustrating, and yet… I hadn’t worked on either of these poses. I tried my best, but in many ways this workshop brought out many of the beliefs and flaws in thinking that are holding me back in life.

These are five of the lessons that I learned from Kino MacGregor.

1. You don’t have to jump so far

This was a big one for me. Kino was demonstrating how to jump into bakasana (crow pose) and showed us how you could jump from only a few inches away from your feet. To be successful, you didn’t have to jump from all the way back in downward dog. The distance didn’t have to be scary. In fact, success was often dependent on your ability to claim those little victories. Victories that you feel you could actually achieve. Eventually you will be able to hop into bakasana from downward dog, but focusing on mastering the hop from a shorter distance first is an important part of the journey. Work your way up.

“But I want to be ambitious!” When I first signed up for the BMO half marathon (coming up in under a week) I declared to the world that I was going to run it in under 1.35 (my previous time was 1.53… yeah). I became so weighed down by this goal that I barely ran at all. Where I was… it was just so far away from where I wanted to be. SO FAR! After putting off my training runs for a little too long, I let that goal go and focused only on running as fast I could at the moment. As a result I’ve ended up really enjoying my runs in a delicious way that I didn’t really experience before. I might not reach that pace for this upcoming half marathon, but maybe I will eventually.

2. Don’t stay where it’s comfortable

During the standing pose series, Kino taught us how, with legs spread, we could bend forward until our head touched the ground. I did it! But the point wasn’t to let your head touch the ground, and then to relax and hang out. As Kino put it (I’m paraphrasing slightly) “If you’re thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner, it’s time to progress.”

Yep, this works as another metaphor. I’ve definitely gotten comfortable in my life. Comfortable in the lists that I routinely make. My morning routine… okay, my ideal morning routine that I beat myself up over not following through on three to four times per week. Even that routine is comfortable though. Everything that I think I know about myself… I turn it into a routine and make it comfortable. The ability to say “this is who I am” with absolute certainty is comfortable. By being uncomfortable you allow yourself to stretch as you open yourself up to new ideas, new experiences and new challenges.

3. Get out of your head. Your head will only tell you why you can’t do something.

This lesson came up when Kino was teaching one of the girls in the class how to jump back into plank from bakasana. It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. Although the girl could balance easily in bakasana, when she was asked to execute the movement, she couldn’t do it. She kept falling – almost before her legs had even lifted off her arms.

Kino explained that this was because she was attempting to over-intellectualize the movement. She was trying to understand, cerebrally, how she was going to do this. What she actually needed to do, was put her presence in her feet, in her body. I never thought about the movement of consciousness throughout your body before, but after this workshop I have began experimenting with this type of awareness. It sounds dumb, but when I’m feeling nervous I have gotten into the habit of wiggling my toes inside of my shoes. It reminds me of where I am. It reminds me that I’m safe.

I’m a very “heady” person. I over-intellectualize EVERYTHING: my relationships, my happiness, my thoughts. It’s not a happy place to be. For some reason I thought that if I were to leave my head, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate “happiness” when it finally arrived. I completely recognize how completely idiotic that is. These past few days I’ve been working on being more conscious of my body and my breath. As a result, my doubts and fears have been significantly dulled. I still hear them of course, but I’ve been hearing them with an ear capable of recognizing the faults in their arguments. Interesting.

4. Find a mentor who believes in you and who is willing to push you.

Kino had such a mentor when she studied in India. She admitted with an inspiring candidness how her biggest obstacle has been her ability to believe in herself. She didn’t believe in herself. She said she believed in the practice of yoga, and she believed in other people’s ability to do the poses, but she had trouble believing in her own ability. Man, have I ever felt like that before.

I am so grateful for the many mentors that I’ve had so far in my life. My voice coach, Mark, specifically has had a huge impact on me. I’ve found it helpful to remember those people, but I will always remember a piece of advice I heard close to a year ago: You don’t deserve a mentor, you earn one.

5. Show up every day

I have a confession to make. Although I have been in voice class since September, I haven’t been “showing up.” I’d do the exercises while still believing that I’d never be able to sing. I never committed to the work, because I didn’t believe that my effort would make a difference. All the same, I wanted to be able to say that I had “tried.”

There’s a difference between going through the motions, and actually showing up with the intention of observing even a fraction of growth. It’s a lesson that I’m still learning… it’s sort of a hard one to get your mind around isn’t it?

Thanks for reading.