Failure is not a dirty word

Last week I took Aimée's Vinyasa class. About halfway through the class, she stopped us and gave a little introduction about the next posture we would do. She said, "a lot of this sequence is built around failure. When we do this next pose, be open to failing."

As we set up and attempted Firefly pose, most of us did fail, even the teacher. After class, I told Aimée how fun the sequence was. She looked relieved and said, "I taught that earlier this week and it was a total bust."

"Why?" I asked her.

"Because I didn't tell the students they could fail," she replied with the clarity only someone who'd seen both sides could offer.

For some reason, failure is a dirty word in our culture. But why?  Failure is the only way to get to where we want to go. How can we learn what we need to learn without failure. I will need way stronger arms and core to do Firefly. If I just popped into it when Aimée offered us the posture, that would be a bore.

As a parent, I often think about what "failure" means to my daughter. I see her, even at age 12, resistant to trying new things for fear that she'll fail. When does this message start and how do we counter it, make failure something to expect instead of something to avoid?

Maybe it is the overt invitation to fail, an explicit offering that unifies us in the experience instead of divides us. Some people are naturally more pliable in certain directions, born with openly rotated hips and short arms and punching biceps. Other people, like me, have hips that naturally rotate more internally and long, Olive-Oilesque arms. I'll fail more times at doing arm balances that require deep, open hips and others will struggle more to do binding poses with their arms and legs like eagle.

It's okay to fail. It's important to fail. I invite you, me, all of us to fail. Next time you come into the yoga room, give yourself a strong, clear invitation to flounder a little bit, to teeter, to fall out, to fail. Let this be the starting point for the rest of your life. What have you wanted to do but avoided because you were afraid to fail? Notice what you've been avoiding and step into those places. Reclaim it, rename it if you want to. Failure is not a dirty word. Thanks Aimée.