Doing You is Perfect in Itself

Stop holding yourself back because of perfectionism.

Last weekend I hosted my first ever women’s circle. I had felt the call to guide these spaces for a really long time - intuitively my inner voice had been encouraging me and externally the Universe had been ushering me left, right and centre through its signals. I’ve also embarked on a new journey over this last month where I purchased a Harmonium with the intention of learning how to play it, which, I had also felt called to to do for what feels like the longest time. So I finally plucked up the courage and did both, going for a double dose of what resulted in the most harmonious discomfort.

Despite being a woman, women’s work has always felt really hard in my mind - I guess there is just SO much to unpacking and embracing and healing the Feminine that it felt like the task was out of reach for me… until, I realised that I’ve been doing a lot of this in my general yoga teaching in classes and online work already and that my fear of not succeeding - based on what the unhealed parts of my mind deem to be “success” - was putting my growth to a halt.

I had a lot of resistance in my mind towards learning how to play an instrument, mainly because I’ve never played anything in my life before other than the recorder in the year 2002. I guess, somewhere in my mind there was fear around me becoming a musician, because growing up I was never that person but rather the one to compliment them through the art form of dance. After some contemplation and remembering how incredibly musical I actually am and that countless people have told me that throughout all my years dancing as well as commenting on my choice of sound in my yoga classes (which, I spend a lot of time making sure it’s “right”) I realised that the fear was actually sitting in my throat. It was completely linked to the fact that the next step after learning to play the harmonium would be to lead people in song and mantra with my voice. Not many people in my life have told me that I have a good singing voice, and I know I still have a lot of healing to do in my throat (for many other reasons, not just this). This was when it clicked - the Universe wants me to play and teach with the harmonium for the benefit of my students, yes, but also for my own healing.

So I had my plan of action for the women’s circle, and it included some chanting time with me playing my new toy and singing. The song I had chosen to play was the first song I taught myself about two weeks or so beforehand. The day arrived and I hadn’t had the chance to rehearse in almost a week, so I planned to practise it that afternoon - which screams my typical last-minute Nicola fashion. As it turned out, mothering required all my focus that afternoon leaving me with about 5 minutes of time to move my fingers about the keys which ended up in me just getting totally flustered and saying “fuck it”.

That evening during the circle, the time came for song and I felt completely unprepared for this part of the gathering but knew in my heart that I just had to do it. And so I did. It was very far from perfect and had I known it would have gone that way beforehand I probably would have shy’d away from playing the instrument but I’m actually so glad I did it because I had so much fun, and could quite literally feel my body healing itself in that moment, whilst also uplifting others or facilitating them to heal. It all felt so connected and beautiful.

Why am I telling you all of this?