The True Meaning of Perfection

By Aileen Hansen

While lighting a candle, I was quieting my mind, when Candace entered my yoga studio. The lanky brunette smiled exuberantly, displaying perfect teeth. Presenting me with an oversized bouquet of yellow roses and white chrysanthemums, the 30ish-year-old radiantly said, "This is for bringing the light into my life!" After my initial surprise, more students began to arrive, and I began feeling conspicuous. I anticipated an explanation from Candace after class, when there would be more time to talk.

Since she was an outgoing woman, it was easy to get to know Candace, who attended my classes for over five years. I learned the purpose of the flowers when she told me more about herself. Candace was the only child of two high achieving adults. Her physician father and college professor mother were excessively critical people and expected perfection from their daughter.

Emotionally paralyzed from their high expectations, Candace dropped out of school for fashion design and spent several years working in an exclusive Chicago boutique earning minimum wages. Disappointing her parents, she felt like a failure most of her life.

Feeling low during her salesgirl career, Candace produced a long list of all her personal faults and character flaws. She said she was determined to overcome them, all at once. While pushing and forcing herself to improve, she intensified every moment as she strove to talk, respond, eat, exercise, read, work and socialize just perfectly.

After a year of attempting to overhaul her entire personality, Candace experienced what she termed a "nervous breakdown." She surmised that her intense need to be in control, rooted in fear, was the cause. Feeling only slightly better after years of therapy and tranquilizers, Candace said she felt like she was hiding behind a mask of defenses-until she discovered yoga.

When she first began practicing, I observed that Candace approached yoga with forceful determination. As her yoga teacher, I simply encouraged her to relax and to let go of self-imposed pressures. After years of faithful practice, she said that yoga taught her to be less controlling with life. Accepting her shortcomings, she cultivated the intention to be in the moment, while being receptive to spontaneous improvement.

One day while gently practicing postures, Candace explained that she came to a personal revelation. "True perfection is having the ability to accept my human deficiencies!" she said. "Now that I can love my imperfect self, I am being perfect!"

This simple insight changed Candace's life. It helped her to accept her critical parents. Their unrealistic expectation was for their daughter to be without faults. They had a twisted assumption that their harsh judgments would somehow motivate their daughter to be a better person. Candace learned that to be a better person was to simply love people the way they are in the moment.

Candace believed that one of the purposes of her life journey was to have these insights. Like so many lessons that appear simple to outsiders, it was challenging for Candace to integrate her realization, which greatly changed her outlook on life.

She explained that she learned to accept her critical parents' nature, realizing that she was powerlessness to change them. However, she rejoiced in having defined a true meaning of perfection for herself, thus making it possible to accept these difficult people in her life.

These insights were so liberating that Candace made the decision to move to New York and go back to school for fashion design. Now free to accept her own humanity, which included making mistakes, she had the courage to face her deep fear of failure. She also had the bravery to withstand her parents' disdain for her career choice and their rage over her relocating to New York.

As a consequence of her newfound strength, Candace presented me with that glorious bouquet of flowers, to thank me for being a light in her life. Here, indeed, was a lesson of humility for me. I readily recognized that I had done nothing but facilitate the yoga postures. It was the sacred practice of yoga that stimulated her awakening.

Candace's story indicates that the results of a serious yoga practice are tangible. Yoga pertains to our everyday relationships and interactions. It is about cultivating a penetrating ability to know and realize the truth behind our experiences. Through the heightened awareness of the mind/body complex, it is possible to accurately define our limiting concepts; we can become aware of beliefs that confine us. Ultimately, we can release those physical/mental blockages that impede us from experiencing the happiness that is our birthright. Although many times we are not even aware of the catharsis that is the result of our yoga practice, sometimes, as with Candace, we acutely experience a conscious awakening.

Although saddened by the years she spent fearing criticism and failure, Candace looked forward to experiencing the upcoming changes in her life-even in the unlikely event of disastrous failure. I was deeply moved by the tearful face of my student as she shared so many painful aspects of her life that had become transformed. Simply listening, I marveled over the healing power of yoga. Meanwhile, feeling so grateful to hear her testimony, I almost forgot to thank Candace for the gorgeous flowers.

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Aileen Hansen is a yoga instructor and freelance writer.