Victor, my yoga instructor, has been talking a lot lately about the importance of honesty in yoga practice. Honesty entails knowing what each part of the body is able and prepared to do, and then forming the posture in a way that honors that. The aim is not to force the body into a particular posture, but rather to ensure that all the disparate parts of the body are integrated as much as possible into the posture.

Honesty is a tricky subject. Over a lifetime we construct so many masks and facades, relying on certain appearances to parade as our true selves. Being honest about who we are, what we want and how we really want to live our lives involves peeling back multiple layers.

A seed of honesty sits within us like the proverbial pea under the mattresses in the fairytale The Princess and the Pea. It is mostly unnoticed but every now and then we feel it rather like we feel a stone in our shoe. It makes us squirm and it is uncomfortable but mostly we ignore it and hope it will once again recede into the dark corners of our psyche.

The fundamental dishonesty we present to the world is the one that causes us to alter our bodies and personalities in ways that we believe make us the most likeable, lovable, and acceptable to the most people. This can range from dyeing our hair blond, to plastic surgery, to silencing or even lying about our true desires.

As women we shave, pluck, laser, dye, diet, don six inch heels, and go into debt for designer labels. We listen to music we don’t like, watch tv programs and movies we don’t enjoy ( and I’m talking about more than the normal compromise that every good relationship thrives on), we go to holiday destinations we don’t want to be in, stay in jobs we hate, wear clothes someone else wants us to wear and do all manner of things we don’t want to do because we don’t want to say no. We want to be a “nice” girl.

We desperately do the things that seem to make others like us more. But the point is not being liked by the greatest number of people. If we left important decisions to what the most people liked there would have been no civil rights laws in the 1960s or any other major social shift in history that was imposed on the people.

What most people like is more a reflection of themselves and their own feelings of powerlessness. What they want of us, in most cases, is a status quo that makes them feel more in control, more validated and more visible to the world.

Most people need to see themselves reflected in another’s eyes to feel that they truly exist. And they exist more happily when the eyes belong to someone who resembles them in values and desires.

When we force ourselves either into a yoga or a social posture we do it not because it feels right but because we think we should - according to someone else’s desire. But if we are not the expression of our own uniqueness, who will be? What do we truly offer the world if we are merely a lesser version of someone else?

Eileen McBride
Eileen McBride is the author of Love Equals Power 2, a spiritual seeker and teacher. This article was published on November 9, 2010.