Self-awareness in Partnerships

During the Leadership Yoga workshop, we often take the time to practice some partner yoga. Partner yoga is exactly what it sounds like, it’s an opportunity to practice asanas with a partner. This doesn’t mean the teacher assisting the student or even one student helping another as a more experienced student. Partner yoga is two students creating poses together as equal participants. In the workshop, we only do a couple of postures, but even fifteen minutes or so of practice together shows participants the important elements of working with a partner. Working with a partner gives each individual the opportunity to stretch a bit further. The counterbalance of a partner allows each person to relax into a posture in new ways.

Essential Practices

It’s also possible to get hurt or hurt someone in partner yoga if we don’t follow some simple but essential practices. First of course, is self-awareness. As you move through the postures, it’s important to pay attention to your own boundaries. In any yoga class, rather than push through pain, we stop and ask for assistance or find a way to modify the pose. When working with a partner, the same ideas apply. Awareness of our experience, feelings, and our boundaries is an important skill in working with a partner in yoga class and everywhere else.

The second practice is, not surprisingly, communication. Working with a partner in alternating stretches, each partner needs to clearly and immediately say something when they have reached the furthest point of a comfortable stretch. The other partner needs to be ready to pause immediately. That’s the simple part because of course, those places of comfort and discomfort change over time. Even in the little time it takes to move through three or four sets of stretches. Speaking about our needs and listening to the needs of others  – deep communication is called for in partner yoga and in any partnership.

Which brings us to the third practice, trust. There are many poses in partner yoga you can’t do without the support of a partner. If partners don’t hold each other with strength and gentleness and the right amount of support, you’ll both topple over. If one person isn’t able or willing to be vulnerable, to admit the need for such support, the partnership will fail. “ If either or both of you are fighting to stay in control of your own independent balance, you will struggle. Someone always seems to be pulling a little too much or not enough, as if you are working against each other.” (p. 96) Interdependence requires trust in others on the mat and off the mat.

The final element is fun. Partner yoga works best when there is an element of fun involved. A willingness to laugh when things don’t go well. An ability to play with a new idea even if it’s awkward and doesn’t seem to work quite as it should. Laughter is a necessary part of a partnership.

Self-awareness with others

I love the idea of playing with paradox in our leadership. The idea that it is self-awareness that makes partnership possible is a wonderful paradox. Yoga teaches us ways to pay attention to our own experience which is a skill that helps us honor the experience of others. And that is an essential part of being an effective leader.

Take care,

Gage

Meditation