Yoga From the Inside Out: Response 3

“But there really is no shortcut in the work of acceptance. Acceptance means that we have made peace with a situation that we are ready to live with it as it is forever, as though it may never change. We may never lose weight, we may never balance in a headstand, we may never sit in lotus pose, our partner may never wash their dishes in a timely manner, our child may never get straight A’s” (98)

When I read this passage, I immediately thought of the practice of the Enneagram. If you are not familiar with the Enneagram, it is a model of personality types associated with numbers 1 through 9. Each number is a different personality with their own core motivating need. They have unique motivating desires and fears. While on the outside it seems a little arbitrary, it has incredible depth that has been studied for thousands of years. 

Why I thought of the Enneagram when reading this passage is that the ultimate spiritual goal of Enneagram study is acceptance. When you are first finding out about your number, you are learning about every other number as well. You begin to realize how different other people see the world. For an argumentative person like myself, I always found it annoying when one of my siblings would never take a side in a fight. Through the Enneagram, I realized that they are a Nine and their primary motivation was Peacekeeping. I learned to accept that their primary motivation is different than my primary motivation of finding what is true (in other words, being right). This Enneagram process taught me that I need to just accept people where they are, with no qualifications, no short cuts. This doesn’t mean accepting people’s bad behavior . It means accepting people’s limitations and not putting unnecessary expectations on them. This idea also applies to your own self and your number as well. As a Four, I have learned to accept that I will always wear my emotions on my sleeve and I will always be painfully empathetic. Instead of trying to deny that, I have learned to use those attributes as sources of creativity and meaningful relationships. 

This method of acceptance is found in yoga as well, or at least Sell’s idea of yoga. To progress in yoga, you need to accept where you are. Instead of trying to stretch beyond your limits to imitate how a pose is supposed to look, you need to recognize what your body can do. And if that means all leg extension poses will look like a newly born baby giraffe (like mine do), then you need to accept your hamstrings are tight but eventually they will loosen up with careful practice. Also, I think it is more rewarding to see how you have progressed after a few practices, then to do it “right” on the first try.