Perception vs Reality

I had some photos done of me in some inversion poses and it’s interesting to see what things really look like.  It is certainly not what it feels like, especially when you are upside down. The pictures show that I am very far away from the wall, but I felt like I was too close. I felt like my legs in Scorpion were pretty close to my head. Not so much! When I feel like my legs are straight up in the air, they aren’t. As a dancer, I grew up using the mirror as a tool to ensure that things looked like they were supposed to, to make sure we were dancing in synch, to see how high we were jumping. Ten years of Bikram yoga (plus the 20 prior years of ballet training) reinforced my need to have the mirror as a tool to see if my poses looked the way they were supposed to. Moving into working on different yoga styles and poses without a mirror has been challenging for me. I have to rely solely on my inner perceptions to evaluate the “correctness” of the posture. Standing in Warrior II, I can see my feet; see if my knee is lined up over my toes and whether my back hip is aligned to the side of my mat. Upside down, working on handstand or forearm stand, I have to “feel” for alignment or use outside sources, like a friend or photo, for feedback.
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Isn’t this often the way of life? We perceive things one way, but someone has a different perception that they reflect back to us. Reality lies somewhere in-between. This often happens when I am discussing memories with family members. We may both remember an event, but what was significant enough for each of us to remember is completely different. The emotion attached to the memory is not the same.  Sometimes one has a memory of a place or event and the other claims to have never been there. The reality is that neither one is absolutely correct and therein lies the issue. Am I having a “wrong” memory? Did my brain change the events in my mind to make them fit what I wanted reality to be? Did the other person? I read somewhere that none of our memories are actually memorized events and only about 50% of them are actually true.  They are stories that we plant, and each time we bring up the story in our minds eye, we may actually be re-writing it. No memory is absolute. It is often colored by the emotions we were feeling at the time the event occurred.  This is an interesting perspective to consider. I see that as an opportunity to learn a lesson and move on, especially if the emotion it brings up is a negative one. Does the memory of where we did or didn’t go to dinner 20 years ago really matter? Or is there a lesson in the memory or story we are telling ourselves? If there is not something that I need to look at and learn from, it is time to move on from that memory. The memory of a dinner may not be important, but maybe the lesson of how important family time is why I needed to “remember” it and discuss it. Sometimes we remember things with a negative emotion and each time we bring it up, we are just replenishing that negativity in our bodies.  Those are definitely memories I can do without. But again, the lesson is there. There is either someone I need to forgive or show compassion to, or I need to replace that emotion with a more positive one. Can I take that negative memory and re-categorize it in my brain to see something positive in it? Repaint the picture?

Like those pictures of my yoga asana, we can and should use these brain pictures or “memories” to make adjustments in our current situations, not dwell on the past or let it keep us stuck.  It’s not easy but through meditation and mindfulness I do trust that it is possible. We can rewire our brain and change the lens through which we choose to view our lives.

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