Perfectionism

Standing like a Tree

A picture of me doing standing posture that Andres took.

There is a fine line between being rigid, imposing a rule on yourself that you have to perform exactly right and being gentle, soft, yielding, accepting exactly where you are, even in discomfort, in pain or in fear. I long for the kind, comfort and softness, and not the rigid standard of perfection I have often imposed on myself.

I have been exploring and playing with the edges of that line trying to find the balance of kindness and love for myself mixed with discipline and discernment. Not too rigid and not too soft. The goldilocks place of balance. It is an actual location, an energetic address, an internal place of balance.

But I do not think this address is a static place, but instead is actually one that is alive with micro movements, subtlety, nuance, and fluidity. One that shifts and moves depending on and responding to where you are in any given moment.

I have come to call my rigidity - my perfectionism - my hamster wheel because that is what it looks like and feels like when I tap into that place in my body where I feel the tension, the anxiety when I am trying to get something “right”. My feet are madly treading water under the surface trying to help me figure out where is perfection so I can land and stay there. “Right” is usually a standard I have not set for myself but is one outside me I am trying to meet, to emulate. But it does not come from the inside out but the outside in. Outside of me. The rigidity feels like white knuckling, and forcing something that is not flowing naturally.

The paradox is that the harder you try to get there, the further away you are.

I understand perfectionism through the element of metal in the Chinese medicine 5 phase cycle. It is the lungs and large and intestine, and it is breathing in and exhaling and releasing. Perfectionism is the strategy that allows me to avoid change and movement and to keep things frozen, static in time in a preserved form. Rooted in fear of the uncertainty of what comes next and how will I mange that. The acquired emotion of the metal element in Chinese medicine is grief. Acquired meaning the emotion we experience in response to life and its stressors and challenges.

Rigidity is fragile because it can easily collapse, anything can come in to topple you over. I learned what this topping feels like full body from doing standing practice. Standing practice (also called embracing the tree, immortal post, horse stance) is a postural practice that focuses on structural alignment and is literally lining up and plugging in our circuitry to that of the Earth. One of the ways to test your alignment is to have someone push on you to see if you can remain rooted, without toppling over. Checking for structural integrity.

There is a key lesson to remaining rooted when doing standing posture. It is something Andres taught me. Being rooted is not rigid. If you brace yourself and are rigid, you are so easy to push over. You can not hold your center so the minute someone pushes, you wobble and lose your footing. Being rooted is absorbing the energy of the push and letting it flow through you without resistance into the Earth. Rooted is flexibility and fluid, and it is alive because you are constantly shifting and yet you are sturdy and solid at the same time.

I used to think alignment was rock solid, unyielding.