I’m a Kinesiologist. I’m a Coach.

I work in an industry where we have conversations about self-love, mind and body potential, clean healthy living, meditation, yoga, breathing, tapping, gratitude, positive thinking, green smoothies…

And while this is certainly one side of the coin, the other side cannot be left unacknowledged either.

This side can look like, binge eating, binge drinking, drinking to forget about life, a cheeky smoke, a not-so-cheeky smoke. (What’s that? You don’t want to be present and marvel at the miracle of life?) Getting home at 6:00 am instead of getting up at 6:00 am! It can feel lonely and disconnected, full of feeling inadequate, feeling like a fraud, void of interconnected-ness.

Feeling rejected after our great idea (or what we thought) goes nowhere. It can involve late night comparisons on Facebook with people in the field, or ridiculously with people not even in the field! On this side of the coin we can often forget that the universe has our backs and instead all our efforts go into striving, trying to get, forgetting why we’re doing it in the first place!

And so this is what I’ve been sitting with over the past few weeks. That there is nothing “wrong” with this side of the coin. That the guilt, shame and blame, that the separation we at times experience are all part of it that is of life.

We are dualistic beings. We are made up of yin and yang. We are made up of light and dark. Remove the judgement and we find neither one is better than the other.

I have a lot of chats with my own Kinesiologist about the notions of right and wrong, good and bad. I even said the other day — “oh I can get so jealous when I see other people doing cool shit online, it’s so bad,” to which she replied “so don’t make it a bad thing.”

And she’s right. I do get jealous.

So be it, I’m human. But in order to not make comparisons toxic (for they are) we can instead use the envy to tap into our own potential. We can use this as motivation and create something of our own, with our own unique flair.

And so this same thinking applies to the “other” side of the coin. By removing the toxic judgement what would it create space for?

In a recent kinesiology session I had the following balance came up:

“I understand why you do what you do, I love you more than I hate what you do, I let it go.”

It’s an affirmation I had to repeat while looking into a mirror tapping certain points on the head to help integrate this new way of thinking. I had to then repeat it each night for a month, while looking deep into my eyes.

The shift has been profound.

For me, this affirmation allows me to get back to me. It allows me to give myself a break. It allows me to accept my choices, all of them. It allows me to soften to them.

Now, this is of course not to say I advocate excessive drinking or smoking or mindless eating (whatever your vice is). But I wonder that in accepting (rather than judging and reprimanding) this aspect of self, will it not then pass with more grace and ease?

I think it’s important as a practitioner to be somewhat transparent. It’s easy to get caught up in the illusion that the practitioner or yoga teacher or mentor has it all together in a way that makes you feel less than them. You’re not. We’re not. We forget that we are all one and indeed reflections of each other. Where you see their light, you’re seeing your own.

By dissolving the illusion of the expectations, or the perceived perfection that can be portrayed online and in life. Remember, life is made up of both sides of the coin. When we accept this, even celebrate it, we come together, we view life as it is and as result remove the separation between each other and ourselves.

What do you think about this? Can you relate? Is there something in your life that you’re judging as bad, as wrong? Can you remove this?

See how you feel when you do.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Apprentice Editor: Kathryn Muyskens/Editor: Renee Picard

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons