Hello Self-Awareness

And farewell to overprotecting and underestimating!

This weekend I was challenged to rethink the practice of protecting our back.  “Do this to protect your back,” is a common phrase in both hiking and in yoga, so as you can guess this caught my attention. 

The challenger, movement science teacher Jenni Rawlings, suggested that when we actively seek to protect our back, we create a narrative in our minds underestimating this strong, amazing muscle group.  And our underestimating can harm other muscle groups that have to compensate for our overprotection.  We need to be aware of our back, yes, but protecting may be too strong of a reaction.

As the week went on, this word-challenge started permeating into other areas of my mind.  Where else do we protect when awareness is a better choice?  

We hold back information because we say we are protecting a loved one.  We fight against ideas that are contrary to our own because we feel protective of our place in the world.   We close ourselves off from the reality of a situation because we are protecting ourselves from embarrassment or shame.  We hold back from challenging ourselves because we are protecting our ego from having to mess up.    

In all of these situations, isn’t awareness a better choice?  Being on the lookout for moments where we may be overprotecting ourselves is self-awareness. We are strong, amazing people! Isn’t it time to kick that habit of underestimating ourselves? We deserve to be self-aware!

Until next time,

Laura