Out of My League

Ainslie chills out in a restorative inversion.

This past January, Margot, Ainslie, Mohler and I attended a two-day series of Iyengar workshops at TAOU Studio in Richmond. The series was led by Jenny Hunter, an influential teacher of Mohler’s who’s based in Dallas. 98% of the students were quite experienced; many were teachers.

During our lunchbreak on Saturday, Margot stayed silent while Ainslie, Mohler and I gushed about the workshops. I turned to Margot. “What did you think about them?” She paused, then sheepishly admitted she had felt out of her league.

I asked her what she had meant. “Did you feel pain in the poses? Did you feel like you couldn’t do them at all?”

She said she hadn’t felt either but had noticed that her backbends weren’t as open and her forward bends weren’t as deep as the rest of the yogis. She felt like she’d been straining to keep up.

“I suck,” she said.

I got that. From the start, I compared my teaching skills to Jenny’s. And although I didn’t feel out of my league, I kept sneaking peeks at the others to see how their alignment, strength and flexibility compared with mine. I felt self-conscious about not being as prop-savvy as many of them.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” –Theodore Roosevelt

I used the above quote to open a blog I had posted in February 2022. I explained how, for good or bad, our need to compare was in our DNA and confessed some of the ways I compared myself to others.

So why am I writing another post on comparison? (The first was pretty good, if I do say so myself.)

Perhaps it’s because of sucky Margot.

The reason her backbends weren’t as open and her forward bends not as deep is because of her unique anatomy and the fact that she’s spent way less time on the mat than most of the others. The reason I wasn’t as prop-savvy is because I teach Vinyasa, not Iyengar.

Recognizing these and other truths about ourselves fuels our understanding of who we are and how we might use our uniqueness to support the growth of ourselves and others.

To Margot and the rest of us who sometimes negatively compare, you’re not out of your league, you’re in a league of your own.