Yoga Bites: Oh, The Masks We Wear

My son Miles, who is 9, loves fantasy and role play – he enjoys:

• dressing in costume
• switching masks & identities
• taking on new voices
• new personas
• acting the part from role to role

He can bounce from being:

• a fierce warrior at battle
• to a pirate on a lost ship
• to a computer genius inventing the world’s most awesome superpower

Half the time he walks around half dressed as one person and quarter dressed as another, inventing new roles as he goes.

Today, about four hours into a no-school-day with three boys running through my home, masked and armed with homemade guns and swords, and me bewildered as to how they can keep the fantasy alive for what seemed an eternity, it dawns on me that perhaps these kids dress up and wear masks, simply as preparation for adulthood, the ultimate role-play.

How much of my days do I spend in guise? Me, wearing the many masks of my life. Today alone I find myself in:

• the mom mask
• the business owner mask
• the best friend mask
• the yoga teacher mask
• the daughter mask
• the wife mask
• the caring citizen mask
• and the student mask

It’s not to say these are fake me-isms, or that the wearing of these masks is necessarily a bad thing. They are indeed roles I play in this giant dramatic, often comedic and sometimes tragic theater called LIFE.

Lights! Camera! Action!

Amidst the running through the house as a one armed pirate earlier today, Miles slipped and fell, and spent about five very upset minutes crying. As I comfort and check to see how hurt he really is, I attempt to speak to him in character, asking if “Pirate Pete” needs anything to feel better. He turns his wet with tears, masked face up towards me and says:

“Mom, I’m not playing anymore! The REAL me hurts".

I have recently been re- writing my bio, a challenging and oh-so interesting task in and of itself. My friend James Bailey suggests I write down two bios:

• the bio that describes how I feel about myself, and
• the bio that I want others to think about me, or how I want to project myself in the world.

I find this task very revealing, as it invites me to look at the varied views I have of myself.

In yoga psychology, our varied views of the self are described with the Sanskrit words mamakar and ahankar. Mamakar is the person that we believe to be ourselves in our own minds. This self will always be much smaller than who we really are, as it is defined by the part of us that clings to all our failures, hurts, fears, past mistakes and guilt, and the part of ourselves that is constantly self mutilating, by trying be better versions of ourselves: smarter, thinner, more successful, richer, younger, more popular, more mysterious, etc.

Ahankar is our “headshot”, or the identity that we project of ourselves to the outer world. It is the part of us that needs to claim, and prove. This self will always want be more than what we are because we think we have to sell ourselves in order to be worthy, respected, successful or loved.

Sometimes it feels that our life is a wrestling match between these two words. The conflict between mamakar and ahankar, between the inner self and outer self.

The mamakar is always trying to live up to the ahankar, feeling unworthy and defeated most of the time. And the ahankar self is always trying to prove the mamakar self worthy, and in the process we often run ourselves ragged taking on more, working harder to show how great we are, and way to often putting our body and spirit at risk via excessive behavior, often leading to self loathing. The uneasy feeling between these two identities creates even more disparity, and amplifies the gaping void and longing for wholeness that many of us feel and spend our lives trying to fill.

What if we could, just as my son does when he chooses to remove his mask or put on another, see that we are all in fact doing the best we can to switch roles as we move throughout our day?  What if we could truly feel, see and behave with the knowing that our true Selves are always there under the costume and that life itself is the act that we are all starring in together?

What if we could, as Miles shows me so sweetly, when feeling bruised and tired from the play, even from behind the mask, ask for help?

Now 1:00am, I wind down and finish writing this post. In four hours I get up and put on my teacher mask. Before I do, I gaze at my altar, and I am thankful for my yoga practice: grateful that I have been offered techniques that help me to collect the parts and feel whole again, even for just a short minute a day.

I am ME.

Yoga: the journey of the self, through the self, to the Self.