Definitions of Insanity
I spent a fair amount of time in 2020 doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, without much innovation on my part. Like most people on the planet, I spent a lot of the year pretty bewildered. I put much of my focus on staying sane. Still, I put out class after class, in the hopes people would sign up. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. On the whole, I had a pretty consistent group of people who showed up to my online classes last year but it was nowhere near what I saw happening for other people in a similar space.
When 2021 rolled around, I kept trying. Surely I'd be able to attract the right people this year, I kept reading articles and listening to podcasts about this booming 'online space'. I kept releasing online breathwork and meditation classes in the hopes that throngs of people would come. I came up with a new theme every other week, I wrote the copy for the classes, I created the event on my website, I made the graphics for promotion. I put a lot of energy into promoting and ideating. And it was crickets. I didn't receive one sign up for the first four months of the year. After a few months of this, I was ready to double down and keep going. I knew I had medicine to share with others and maybe they would find me if I just kept doing the exact same thing... The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I am deeply familiar with this concept, and yet.
Then, the universe placed a health intervention in my path which forced me to stop. One Monday morning in late March, the hospital called and said that an opening was available that Thursday for a surgery I had been listed for since pre-pandemic. I'd be in hospital for about a week and it was a three-month recovery. I had no choice but to surrender.
I immediately ordered about six bags of different types of oats and packed a ridiculously large suitcase for the hospital, determined to control what I could control around my hospital stay (when so much of it was completely out of my hands). Similarly to my online offerings, I gripped tightly to what was comfortable. For the record, no human can eat six bags of oats in one week, especially not after abdominal surgery.
You may have noticed that I still have not started my classes back up, and that's because within the surrender of it all I realised I had to do things completely differently. It's something I already knew around month two of the aforementioned crickets but historically I learn things best by being pummelled over the head rather than by subtle hints. I'm still working on what that will look like. I've done further training with some of my teachers which has helped unlock new insight into how and what I want to offer. In the meantime, I've been partnering with other organisations to see how that works. I just know that I no longer want to grip so tightly to what I think my teaching practice should be because I don't do it to create constriction for myself or others. The reason I do it in the first place is to help others find freedom and grounding for themselves.
Starting next week, I'm teaching a 4 week meditation course in collaboration with Our Place and Volunteer Hackney. I'm so excited to have the opportunity to teach IRL, which I haven't done since March 2020. It's also FREE so anyone and everyone is welcome. Check out the flyer below for more information.