Perfection vs. wholeness

The word for perfect in Sanskrit is purna.  What I love about this word is that it also means "full" or "complete".  When I think of perfection, I think of something that is without flaw.  I think of something impossible that one strives for but never actually achieves.  I imagine someone tense and frustrated and feeling like they are never enough.

When I think of words like full, complete and whole, I get a completely different feeling in my body and image in my head.  It is more like the image above, me standing on a rock in the sun, expanding the space around my heart and lifting my gaze to the sky.  I was not perfect in that moment, nor was my life; but, there was wholeness.  I was complete in that place, at that moment.  

One of my yoga teachers said to the class one time, "Perfection is a moving target.  It changes as you change.  It expands as you expand."  I like this definition because it allows for flaws, it considers growth, and it doesn't make me feel like crap about myself.  I think that, as women, in this particular culture, we expect our bodies to be perfect.  We are taught that.  We are meant to strive for that, forcing our bodies and our lives into a shape that someone else has created, depriving ourselves of the space for breath, curiosity and unfolding.

What if perfect was no longer a thing?  What if it was just wholeness?  How would we move towards that, into that, allow that, experience that?  And how would that change our relationship with our bodies?  Don't get me wrong, there is still work to be done.  There are mental shifts that need to take place, knowledge that needs to be gained. movement that needs to happen, growth that needs to occur.  Our bodies need and want to change; they want to move towards more: more freedom, more health, more vitality.  And we will step into that process.  But we don't have to have the goal of perfection anymore.  We can completely drop that.  We can find wholeness in who and how we are now and move with the target.

Try this: 
Stand with your feet firmly planted (maybe on a big rock in the sun!).  Feel your body expand three-dimensionally with your breath, your whole body expanding softly in all directions, as if you were inside of a sphere and you were growing to the inner edges of the sphere.  And say to yourself, "What if this was enough right now?"  From that place, you can more easily welcome the necessary steps for expanding into the next version of wholeness, your ever-expanding wholeness.

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