Is it Paula?

One of the things I like about teaching groups is that when someone asks a question, everyone else can learn from it. Often students have similar thoughts but don’t dare to say anything.

Recently, a student of mine asked if what she was doing when she practiced on her own was “Paula”.

When people do qigong, Pilates, or yoga, the instructions are so clear that they know what is expected of them. Especially when they take their first steps, they try to follow them the best they can and aspire to get better with time.

Paula is different. The exercises are taught with little or no instruction, and the focus is not on performance but rather on spontaneous responses. Many times, instead of doing the exercises “better” people find that they want to do the exercises slower, with less effort, and I encourage them to do so.

What confused my student was that I kept saying: listen to your body. She listened so well that it told her to stop doing things she’d been doing for years (and thought were good for her) and focus on rest instead. Instead of going for a walk, doing yoga, or exercising, her body said: sleep! She got very confused. Will she become lazy because of the Paula Method? Is her body misleading her?

My student understood the essence of the method, but she needed reassurance that she was heading in the right direction. She’s here to heal herself, and her body was telling her: first I need lots of rest. Stop dragging me to another activity. I don’t have time to take care of your wellbeing when we’re constantly busy. Such messages can be scary when we haven’t yet built that trust with our bodies, when what other people have told us our entire lives keeps distracting us: Wake up an hour earlier to do your exercises! Do more! Have self-discipline! If you don’t keep working on strengthening your body, your health will surely decline!

I ask my students to take a huge leap of faith, and that’s not easy. I tell them that their bodies know the quickest and most direct way to better health and to ignore what experts have told them in the past. I don’t ask them to trust me. I ask them to trust themselves.

So, is it Paula? My answer to my student was: Does it matter?

This is her body, daring to tell her the truth. Will she dare to listen to it? I ask her to trust that beyond all these hours of rest and sleep lies better health. She will gain energy at some point, but she will no longer use it to exhaust herself as she did in the past.

And then I cross my fingers with each of my clients and each of these questions, hoping that they’ll choose themselves and trust this one time, so that they can trust more in the future. I hope that they will rest and stop working on automatic pilot - if this is what they need for their healing journey. By listening to the body, they will discover that what it has to offer them is far more precise and rewarding for their health and wellbeing than anything else.

I’ve seen it happen so many times that I know it to be true.