Photo by Bunker.

The thing is, you just have to listen to your shoulder. You really, really do.

After almost fifteen years of diligently practicing yoga, including six years of teaching, I realized. Ooooooh. My shoulder doesn’t want to move that way.

The problem isn’t that I didn’t have the knowledge, nor is it that I didn’t hear the teachings.

It isn’t that anyone told me to move my shoulder in the wrong way.

It’s that I heard “flatten your shoulder blade onto your back” and latched onto it as the right way to do yoga. If you’ve ever taken a yoga class that had any alignment cues at all — you’ve probably heard this before. Hell, maybe from me. It’s not a bad cue. It’s a good cue actually.

Trouble is, it doesn’t work for every pose.

And then, one day, my little shoulder blade said to me, for the millionth time, “Meghann, stop pulling down while you are trying to reach up, please!!!”

And finally, I heard it.

The relief was unreal…but the embarrassment, that stung a little.

I had been telling people to feel their body for years. And my right shoulder had been hurting, since, well, since I can remember. Probably since that first Down Dog in 2002.

Photo by Scott Schell.

When I was seven, my mom’s friend told me that I was going to be either a nun, or a comedian. Turns out — she wasn’t far off.

But we hear these things and they get stuck in our little brains.

My great grandmother used to say, if we ever swore, we would be permanently disqualified from the Ms. America pageant. I think I was twelve when I realized, what the fuck? I don’t even want to be Ms. America.

We hear these little things, and we try. I want to honor my effort, and yours. It’s a beautiful thing, a source of inspiration — to hear a teaching and follow it.

And we have to start somewhere. It’s good to follow teachings from wise teachers, but — the great risk is, if we only follow this advice, it could lead to a lifetime of flattening your poor little shoulder blade onto your back. And even worse, never feeling the freedom of reaching for the heavens.

Photo by Haley Peele.

What I LEARNED THE HARD WAY, from my poor and long suffering little shoulder — is that it’s really hard to stop and feel, and harder still, to trust it — it’s not easy. And the world you live in might not support you in that endeavor.

We are trying really hard to do the right thing. We are using the best advice, the best teachings, the things that we have been told that make sense. We are sitting. We are reading. We are practicing. Diligently. Fastidiously.

But what if your shoulder doesn’t want to move that way?

The only real answer is in there, in the reaction you get from how it feels — in your body. I want you to feel a lot of empathy for how hard it is to stop doing what you think you should be doing, and start following what feels right.

Right now, in this moment — my wisdom is saying “Yes. Keep going. This is the right way.” And that is all I get.

I wish it were more. I wish there were a manual with more clear instructions. But that isn’t the way it works.

Photo by Bunker.

The truth is, I can’t tell you how to listen. I can only point.

What I can tell you, with 100% certainty, is if you dedicate yourself to listening, one day, you will hear it. You will hear it, and you will recognize it.

That voice will probably encourage you to do something that scares you. And I really hope you do it.

I want us to cheer each other on, for diligently walking — for trying to be more awake and alive in the world. For walking past the point where our teachers can teach us…and into the land where we create from the source that is already, and always was, egging you on…from that whisper, that only you can hear.

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