practice, not perfection

the title is a riff off of something i first heard in 12 step: “progress, not perfection.”

and while I don’t engage in 12 step anymore (the rigidity and spirituality really did not work for my ex-evangelical, ex-cult self), i am stealing this phrase and editing it, for somatic purposes.

in somatic practice, i lean often on a concept i’ve heard in many iterations from many teachers.

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my colleague friend Hannah Harris-Sutro says it as “practice likes repetition.”

my teachers Jessica Patterson and Vanissar Tarakali say, “what you practice, you embody. what you embody, you transmit.”

today with a client, I shared how the essential orientation of practice is a remedy to the white supremacy culture narrative of perfection.

in the healing industrial complex, there is the cure narrative, the quick fix, the “perfect” way to do something to Achieve Healing.

i find practice to be the balm for this. inherent in the word “practice” is the idea of intention: we are doing something on purpose, repeatedly, for a reason. but there is also spaciousness - in practice, there is room for mistakes, experimentation, play.

(which, btw - did you know that play is a fundamental way that we shift out of survival responses? thank you to Relational Uprising for that one)

with the spaciousness of practice, play, and experimentation, we shift out of the cure narrative pressure of “perfection” and instead, can feel free to practice things with our bodies and see the result.

feeling tense in your shoulders? what is it like to practice tensing into the tension?

or what happens when you just notice the tension, what else rises to the surface? (emotions, remembered relationships, thoughts)

what’s it like to lay down on the ground and let the tension in your shoulders feel the ground… what happens?

in practice, there is no “right or wrong.” there is only practicing, and seeing the effect, seeing how our bodies respond. and then deciding if that is the effect we want.

i invite you, when you are bringing attention to your body, or doing somatics, to approach it with the intention of practice. and to see how that shifts how you show up.

(as my teacher Jessica Patterson often references - how we do something, and why we do something, shapes -what- we are doing to begin with)

practice, not perfection.