The Wobble Is the Practice

The Energy

If you've been feeling unsteady the last few days, you're definitely not alone. We're in a last quarter moon, a release point, and that's just the most basic of astrological points. There's so much going on in the sky I wouldn't even know where to begin. In any case, we are all being asked to let go of whatever identity got us to this moment, so there's room for whoever's arriving next. Yes, still. I know.

And that letting go isn't gentle. It's not a slow fade. It's a spark deciding whether to catch. But what if instead of that feeling scary, it felt exciting?

I keep thinking about toddlers (maybe because sometimes I still feel like one). How they don't learn to walk by getting it right. They wobble. They fall. They hit their heads on the coffee table and cry and pull themselves back up and try again, like the falling was never the point, just the price of admission, and they just accept it. And keep going.

Nobody tells you that becoming feels the same way at forty, at fifty... at any age. You'd think it would get smoother. It doesn't. Rebirth is never comfortable. It's not supposed to be. If it felt easy, you'd have to wonder if you were actually changing at all, or just rearranging the furniture in the same old room.

So how do you know you're there? Standing in the new identity instead of just visiting it?

Maybe you don't, not at first. Maybe it feels less like arriving and more like balance. Like standing on a teeter totter, right on the pivot point, weight distributed so carefully between who you were and who you're becoming that one wrong shift sends you sliding back to familiar ground. Or one shift forward propels down the slope into whole new territory.

That's where we are in this moment. Right on the fulcrum. Testing whether this new identity can hold its weight, or whether it's still got the wobble of something newly born.

The Teaching

There's a concept in yoga that's so deep in my soul that I literally have the sanskrit words tattooed on my wrists as a constant reminder. Abhyasa and vairagya. Practice, and letting go.

Not practice as in discipline for its own sake, or discipline because someone told you have to. Abhyasa is the commitment to keep showing up, keep standing back up after the wobble, keep choosing the new identity even before it feels natural. It's the toddler getting up off the floor one more time. And then another... and another...

Vairagya is the other half, and it's the one we skip. It's non-attachment to how any of it turns out. Not indifference. Definitely not giving up. Just... loosening your grip on the specific shape you thought this becoming was supposed to take.

Because without vairagya, you practice so hard, you hold on so tight to the outcome you pictured, that you go rigid. And rigid people miss things. They miss the door that opened three feet to the left of the one they were pushing on. Or the opposite happens. It doesn't go the way you pictured, and you turn all that discipline against yourself instead. You call the wobble a failure instead of a phase. Or a learning opportunity.

Trusting yourself, which we talked about last week, is part of this too. Confidence was never about knowing the outcome in advance. It's what lets you keep practicing without needing the guarantee.

What if the version of this that's arriving is better than the one you had planned? Or what if there's a lesson still waiting between here and there, one you needed the wobble to learn, before you're ready to call yourself arrived? (I mean, I think 'arrival' is a myth too but we'll save that for another day.)

Abhyasa says keep going. Vairagya says let go of needing to know where or how.

The Invitation

So here's your permission slip as we tiptoe onto what might be the pivot point we've been approaching for so long now.

You have permission to keep practicing without knowing if it's working yet. You have permission to fall off the teeter totter and climb back on without narrating it as proof of anything. You have permission to want a specific outcome and hold it loosely at the same time. Those aren't opposites. That's the whole practice.

If you want somewhere to put this, sit with one of these:

Where in your life are you gripping so tight to a specific outcome that you might be missing the open door three feet to the left?

What would it look like to keep showing up (abhyasa) this week without needing proof yet that it's working?

If the wobble you're in right now isn't a failure, what is it actually teaching you?

You don't have to answer all of these. Pick the one that made your stomach drop a little. The one that makes you feel like you're teetering on the edge. That's usually the one.

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