Dealing with the (I’m)posture

I am a 32 year old queer woman who came out at age 25. Until that point in my life I lived a public and private self that were quite different, but I always worried, if anyone else knows I’m faking it I’ll get in trouble. This was how I navigated my younger life and, as many coping mechanisms do, it has had profoundly negative impacts on my life as an adult. That is to say, living as my genuine self still feels like at any moment, whatever I’m doing, someone is going to bust through my door and discover that I am, in fact, a fraud in all things I do, including mere existence. I have taken on many new skills in my adult life, but often time in severe privacy with no one getting to see my process of learning, keeping all of my growth experience in a black-box. As this has been my way of living I am STRUGGLING when it comes to my shortcomings and lack of knowledge in this course and having so many eyes on it. My biggest benefits during this struggle have actually been 2 fold. The first is just connecting with my classmates. During the earlier weeks of this course I felt very veiled about how I was struggling and I felt I had to keep up appearances of doing well, because I thought that EVERYONE ELSE was just hunky-dory. I felt that clearly I must be the only person who felt lost and confused about even some of the core competencies and it was evidence that I probably bit off more that I could chew with this program. It, honestly, wasn’t until I actually had a real conversation with some of my peers and just told them, “ I’m lost,” that I heard them reciprocate that! As silly as it might seem, I was really blown away at how many other students were struggling with this and I was very very grateful to no longer be alone in that process. From there, commiseration and encouragement were suddenly tools I had access to, which has majorly helped me keep myself out of that “I’m the only one” headspace.

The other factor that I have really benefited from actually comes from seemingly unrelated activities and that is breath-work that I have learned from martial arts and contortionism. In either of those practices there are many many moments that lead your body to panic. Doing a full backbend can majorly limit access to air, so every little bit you can get counts, but reflexively causes the body to say “STOP YOU CAN’T BREATH” even when you actually can. The goal there is slowing down the panic, slowing down the moment and checking in with any part of your body that is panicking WITH your breath. If you lungs feel like they can’t get enough air, focus on JUST your breaths and how they move through your body. Let that breath travel to your lungs and follow its departure back out. Slowly expand the breath to your surroundings: your torso, full body, the ground you stand on, the world around you. As your breath expands, assumptions and paradigms can shift to the moment you are in, which is often less based in preconceived notions. What was previously the thought of “I can’t breathe” quickly becomes “I am fine, there is air all around me and I have easy access to it, if I go slow and be patient.” The same thing happens when we are allowing the imposture self to take the controls