Last week, I got a text from a friend, asking me why another professional didn’t “_____”

I responded and told her “because professionals are just people too”.

We aren’t robots twisting ourselves into pretzels and staying there for 42 years.

At one point, my body was in chronic pain and it was hard to exercise. I was still teaching people how to exercise, even though I wasn’t “walking the talk” at the time. I now truly understand how exhausting it is, how demoralizing it is, how hard it is when you hurt and someone tells you to just do a pigeon pose, as if that is a panacea for all the mental and physical challenges of being tired and fragile.

Professionals often hide our pain and failure. Because it’s seen as shameful to be human.

We are honestly no different than you. And it’s frankly better if we’ve had some of the same pains and failures as you.

Pain and failure humanizes us all.

Pain and failure tends to bring in empathy and wipe away overly simple advice such as “just stop eating carbs” or “this pose will fix it”.

Pain and failure introduces complexity, compassion.

Most of us aren’t posting it or writing about it because the first thing that happens is suspicion and backlash: “if your professional advice works, why isn’t it working for you?”

But do you honestly want to see a professional that learned one technique years ago and has never had to amend it, never had to grow or change, never had to re-examine, re-integrate, re-learn?

Do you want someone who has never had to struggle or be open to new information?

Anyone supporting you is themselves a person who is also a human, prone to challenge and failure.

And if that professional is eventually able to overcome the challenge, it also introduces new information to their practice.

The struggle is real.