Most people are familiar with the fairytale Snow White. If not, well then, my deepest apologies for your robbed childhood. The wicked Queen gazes daily into her mirror and asks the same question, over and over: "Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" The mirror, who I imagine must be an exhausted enchanted creature, constantly ruing his lot in life as this vain woman's mirror, always answers the same: "You, my Queen, are the fairest of them all." Until one day, as the story goes,the mirror reflects back the one thing the Queen dreads most. The answer that she has always been afraid to hear, and despite her efforts over the years to control the outcome: that there is indeed someone more fair.
We all know how the story goes (well, all of us except those few robbed childhoods I mentioned earlier)...a banished beauty, singing Dwarfs, poisoned fruit, and true love's kiss that triumphs over evil. While Snow White's tale is the focus of the story, for today's post, I'd like to zero in on the Queen. Every day she stared at her own reflection only seeing what she wanted to see. Only asking questions she wanted the answers for. If she truly wanted to see the truth, she would have asked the right question: Mirror, mirror on the wall, how can I be the fairest of them all?
The mirror then, might have had a chance to give her the answers she needed, instead of just giving back the ones she wanted to hear. The enchanted mirror could have been a teacher of sorts, helping the Queen understand what true beauty was, and how she could always feel content in her own skin, instead of lashing out at anyone that made her feel inferior.
Every time we carve out a space for our yoga mats in our busy day, our mat is our mirror. A reflection of who we are shows up. (And you were starting to wonder how this was going to come back to yoga) Do we fear what the mirror will say? Do we try to make our mirror reflect what we want it to, or as we truly are? We can't do the work unless we are truthful with what we see. Our mats can be our teacher if we let it. If we struggle with perfectionism in our lives, it will be reflected in our practice. If we fear failure, it will be reflected, if we are negative thinkers...well, you get it.
I would encourage you at your next practice to embrace this time of reflection. Slow your breathing down. I tell my students all the time that approaching the postures is not about doing them perfectly or "textbook". It's about approaching the posture and observing how we react to it. It's an active mediation. We don't need to be in a rush to hurry and try and fix what we see, but to just begin to understand it and work with it.
Eventually the hope is that we will not only come to an understanding of our reflection, but an acceptance. And if we come to accept who faces us in the mirror, what else could possibly hold us back?
Look into your mirror
And tell me what you see
Is it really you?
Or someone you cannot be
Don’t look at someone else’s mirror
And tell them who they should be
Looking in their mirror
Will not change what your mirror sees
When you look into your mirror
Are you sure you see yourself?
As you gaze into your eyes
Are you sure your eyes aren’t reflecting someone else?
It’s not the mirror’s fault,
That it reflects someone else
How do you expect a mirror to reflect you
If you don’t know who you are yourself
~Author Unknown
1 comment:
Great post (of course)! It made me recall when I was a kid and used to stare at myself in the mirror and pretend I was staring at someone else. I had forgotten about that. Don't quite know why I did that, but maybe I was just studying myself. Who knows. At least now I have my mat for a mirror. ;)
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