What Are You Afraid Of?

This is the first installment of my 10-week blogging challenge proposed by Sue Ann Gleason – Chocolateforbreakfast.com & ConsciousBites.com.  Joining me in this challenge is a group of 10 other bloggers all of whom are women.  Ironically, having grown up in a house with 3 sisters, I find myself in familiar company; surrounded by a group of amazing women!  My entire life, I have always been more comfortable in a group of women than in a group of like-minded men.  Having never feared to walk the line between the genders, I feel that my ability to transcend boundaries of any sort is what has guided me to this fantastic group that Sue Ann has amassed.  Both in my work and in my personal life, I strive to be a “conduit”; facilitating change, pensive thinking, and self-exploration.  As a yoga teacher, I encourage my students to explore their own feelings rather than seeking affirmations in comparisons to books, videos, or other students.  The path of yoga leads one to look underneath the skin where the Self resides; your soul if you will, and in that place, attributes like gender are irrelevant. All that matters is the Who, the true Self, the person that you “really” are without the attributes of society, family, gender, or personal image. Professionally I refer to myself as a movement therapist, which can take on many meanings depending on the person in front of me.  If we look at licenses and certifications, I am a massage therapist and a yoga teacher but those are merely labels inflicted by society.  Is any one of us just a teacher, just a writer, just “Joe the plumber”? Certainly we are much more than the sum of a few labels, so why should I limit myself, particularly in a business where the goal is helping people find their own “health.”  All of that aside, if I revert back to the conduit analogy, my intention is always to propagate change, whatever that might be.  I deliver the spark that inspires people to make realizations within their own lives.  Sometimes for the better, sometimes not, but at least the awareness of possibility is now in their possession.

For me life is all about the journey, the exploration, and ultimately the experience done so without regret.  No Regrets!  That’s my mantra.  To reach for that lifestyle successfully means reaching beyond one’s fears.  That is a biggie!  Fear!  Yikes.  The biggest obstacle to change we all face is FEAR! The big “What if?”  If I can lead someone to a closer relationship with their own fears, then I feel I have given them the keys to open any number of doors that may come before them.  Crossing the threshold requires a deep faith in ones Self.  This blog is a personal threshold that I am hoping to walk across in the next 10 weeks.  I don’t feel a particular fear of blogging per se, but more a fear that whoever reads this can see a part of my soul and I will expose my foibles, dysfunctions.  If there is one thing I have always loathed, it’s a Poser!  An Amateur.  A Wanna Be.  Look in the mirror my friend; it don’t lie, or does it? 

The external attributes that we “project” for everyone else to see are not a reflection of who we really are.  Often times though, we get stuck in the belief that our external image “is” who we are.  Changing that perspective is the goal of my work.  Cultivating a better reflection of who we really are.  Hiding ones fears behind a mask leads only to pain, regret, and loneliness.  So here I am, all my faults and fears laid bare.  I am an open book for you to read.  I am blunt to a fault and brutally honest.  No Regrets!

So what of my own fears? We all have them, right? I am certainly not immune.  Throughout my life I have tried to face my fears one by one.  Born an introverted child of similar parents, I constantly longed to be in the spotlight but remained a wallflower due to a lack of self-confidence and an over-riding perfectionist mentality.  This is particularly evident in my musical pursuits.  From the age of 12, I would spend hours and hours practicing guitar in my room but never venturing out into the world to perform.  I could never bring myself to exhibit my talents in public because I didn’t feel I could live up to my own expectation of who I wanted to “project”.  This is a common fear I see many people and in many ways.  In developing our elaborate personal image throughout our childhood, teen years, and well into adulthood, we become slaves to that image thereby dodging our true Self! Often times, we try aimlessly to incorporate both our “projected self” and our “true self” into one person but inevitably we fall short because the “projection” keeps telling us to play someone else yet, in order to do that, we must ignore our own inner voice.  By exposing our true Self to scrutiny and possible ridicule, we risk failure and rejection.  How then do we overcome our fear and face the world as our ”Self?” 

Honesty!  Plain and simple. We are all born perfect the way we are.  Life is merely the pursuit of revealing that perfection without attributes; without posing as someone else.  You have to be honest with your Self; who you truly are.  This can be a daunting endeavor depending upon how deep the Self is buried, but only through genuine self-reflection can the face behind the mask be revealed.  The past is the past, you can’t change it, but you can change the future and that moment begins now.  I spent decades trying to overcome my fear of perfection and what I discovered on that journey was that I was perfect all along.  How strange that something so simple was right in front of me the whole time, hidden beneath the mask I had created. 

Remember, a life lived in fear of the “What If” is just that.  Take the time to really get to know your Self and you will become the person you have always wanted to be.  After all, what are you afraid of?

Matthew Corrigan, CMT, RYT

Prana Healthworks 2011