The Pebble in your Shoe

I had the pleasure of attending a great Yoga class earlier this week, at the Tubac Healing Arts Center, and the instructor said something that really stuck with me:

“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out;
it’s the pebble in your shoe.” – Muhammad Ali

Isn’t that the truth?

On the near side of all our grand ambitions, we all have our thing –  our pebble – which often holds the key to the real work we came here to do.

Do you have a pebble in your shoe? (It’s probably that first thing you thought of when you heard the saying.)

It’s easy to think that if we could just get rid of the pebble in our shoe, we could get on to the “real” or “important” stuff.

But what if it’s possible that the pebble IS the practice? That the thing we’re always trying to get away from is actually the key that will unlock our deepest potentials, if only we can find a way to turn it. If only we stopped running away from it, only to find that it has found us again.

Take meditation, for instance. It’s easy to think, “hey – I would be great at meditation if only I could get rid of all these distracting thoughts in my head.” Not realizing that finding a way to BE with the distracting thoughts in your head IS meditation. (Yes, the distracting thoughts may diminish in time, but there is no way OUT but THROUGH.)

The difference here is:

We’re not meant to walk the journey of a thousand miles with a pebble in our shoe.
We can’t, although many of us try.
We’re meant to bravely find a way to deal with the pebble.

Take working with horses, for example. I had the gift of spending time with an EFL (Equine Facilitated Learning) client who unexpectedly had a lot of fear come up around being close to the horses. We talked about the impulse and the temptation to want to shove that feeling down, in order to “get on to the activity” that had been planned. And we also talked about how “doing the activity” would be pointless, and probably unpleasant and meaningless, unless we dealt with, well, the pebble in her shoe.

So that is what we did.

Working with the feeling in order to come to terms with it became the practice.

Take Yoga too. So many people believe that Yoga is about being flexible, so you can “do” the poses.

Not so.

Yoga is about being with what is, honoring your body and mind just as they are in the moment. It’s about radical acceptance, and breathing, and being with what is. The physical practice is about exploring movements and poses that have many, time-honored benefits, in a way that brings benefit and health to body and mind.

Sometimes the impulse to skip ahead is, itself, the pebble in the shoe. It’s different for you, and different for me. But the truth about it is the same.

Do you know what I think? I think that the pebble keeps showing up, in all its irritation, because it is asking us to find a different way of doing something. And the WAY that we FIND will also open up the path toward the mountain for us.

In other words, it’s not a distraction, or an inconvenience on the path: it IS the path.

So this week, when we start to feel that familiar irritation, let’s stop and ask: what am I here to learn about this? How can I do something differently, in order to walk with grace and ease again? How does this seemingly minor yet persistent thing relate to my grander hopes and dreams?

The answer will come to you, if you seek it. If it surprises you, that’s an extra bonus.

“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.” – Guy Gavriel Kay

Have a wonderful week, everyone!

Namaste,

Erin

P.S.