The Compliance Trap & Performing Healing
Moving past "perfect posture" to reclaim lived somatic truth
Ok my friends, before we dive deeper into this one, lets take a moment and check in -
Take a breath, not a performance breath, not a yoga teacher breath, just a regular human breath. Let’s talk about these hidden rules we have been handed…
I think its safe to say that we as human beings have been conditioned to preform from childhood. We are taught to be “good” and that really meant being compliant. We are told to do what the adults tell us ( meanwhile half them adults was all over the place anyway and should have been taking their own advice but I digress lol). As children, especially Black children, we are taught to read the room, anticipate what is expected of us and adapt our shapes to match the metric of someone else’s approval. And then… We step onto our yoga mats.
Now we bring this same conditioning to our healing practices. Subconsciously
, the old, quiet rules step in to run the sow:
make every pose look perfect for the room
be flexible, be quiet, be agreeable
listen to external cue of the teacher (even when your internal cue is scremaing hell no)
This… this is the compliance trap. The moment we stop practicing yoga and start preforming our healing instead of actually living in it.
The Cost of Overriding Your Signals
When we prioritize performance and alignment over liver truth and honoring our unique bodies (physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, spiritual) we are sending our nervous systems a dangerous message: to override its own intelligence.
In my yoga teacher training live class last week, a massive shift happened from one question I asked the crew. We looked at this head on and in a confronting way with ourselves. Because true somatic work isnt about achieving a shape. It’s more about building an impeccable relationship with your boundaries (your edges). It’s about cultivating neuroception - which is the ability to listen to your body’s true state of safety, activation or collapse (finding our window of tolerance) and honoring it without judgement. Cuz baby we are HUMAN.
If an asana looks picture perfect but your nervous system is in a state of silent fight or flight, or even freeze or fawn, that ain’t really yoga at all, its Compliance love.
Reclaiming the Lived Truth
True Liberation happens when you give yourself permission to break this binary of “good” or “bad” practice.
The next time you find yourself on the mat (or in any practice really). I want to invite you to ask yourself “Am i doing this because it feels aligned from the inside out, or am i doing this to be a “good student” (good person)?
Let your practice breathe my love. Reclaim your signals, Your lived Truth is the only metric that matters.