Swedish Bhairavi Says: “Invite the Awkwardness..”
There is an invitation we want to give you this week.
Invite the awkwardness. Let yourself be a little awkward. Let something new shape the mouth, the breath, the body, the mind, the emotions…and the heart.
We often have a strange expectation when we learn. We want to be new at something, but somehow still look as though we already know how to do it. We want it to come naturally. So, because of that, there can be a sort of inner demand or dialogue we have that says: “Whatever I do, I want to look natural while I am learning it. I want to feel that this comes naturally to me.”
And of course, sometimes it does. Sometimes, you hear a sound and immediately you can reproduce it. You encounter a movement and the body understands. You receive an instruction and something in you says, Ah yes, I know this somehow.
That is beautiful. And there are reasons why it feels so natural. Sometimes the new thing was simply not very far away from where we were, or there was no need for us to go through every nook and cranny of that learning experience this time around. The learning might be new, yes, but the journey towards it is relatively short.
Other learnings ask us to travel further. And those are not always so “pretty”. The tongue goes to the wrong place again and again. The breath does not yet know how to cooperate. The hands hesitate or the rhythm disappears the moment we stop actively thinking about it. We might understand an instruction intellectually, yet the body seems to have received an entirely different message.
There can be something very fertile in this space. Not because difficulty itself is sought after, and not because everything uncomfortable must therefore be good for us. But when we for example are engaged in a sound practice, receiving appropriate instruction and learning something genuinely new, awkwardness does not necessarily mean that something is wrong.
Sometimes it simply means that we have reached somewhere we have not worked on before.
The smooth learnings may have been close to you. The awkward ones may be further away. And precisely because they are further away, they may eventually give fruits that the familiar parts of you could never have produced. Some of the most fruitful learning begins by making us look a little less accomplished, not more.
For a while, we have to leave the space in which we know how to be graceful. Usually people and practitioners too, like competence. We like knowing. We like the satisfaction of doing something well. There is nothing wrong with any of that. But if we only remain where we already move “beautifully”, our world and development as practitioners becomes a bit small.
Practice asks us to remain teachable. To listen again. To try again. To allow a correction to enter. And perhaps to realize that what feels “natural” to us today is often simply what has been repeated for a very long time.
Sometimes what eventually becomes graceful has to be allowed to be awkward first!
This is why allowing imperfection matters. Allowing imperfection is not the same as becoming careless. Because carelessness says that an act doesn’t matter. Perfectionism says that we should already be able to do that act.
Practice says: Listen, refine, try again…
When we can do that, something stays fluid in us. As practitioners we do not have to defend every mistake. We do not have to collapse because we are corrected. We do not have to become frustrated because the body has not yet learned what the mind understood five minutes ago.
There can even be playfulness in it. And playfulness is not the opposite of serious practice.
So perhaps this week, allow a little more of that Ḍākinī essence into the practice. Allow yourself to enter places where you are not yet polished and where you do not have a fixed way or idea of yourself.
And when something feels a little awkward, perhaps do not rush to close the door.
Invite it in.
With love,
Swedish Bhairavi
