OM_Yoga_Magazine_December_2019

om mind

From corporate attorney to yoga teacher and burlesque dancer: Lora Cheadle

outlines her four stages of competence and how the principles of FLAUNT! can set you free

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sing the principles of burlesque, author Lora Cheadle’s

new book FLAUNT! Drop Your Cover and Reveal Your

Smart, Sexy & Spiritual Self helps women strip away

everything nonessential that’s covering their raw,

beautiful souls in order to reveal the sparkling goddess

lurking inside. All too often, women have been taught to hide their

true selves with costumes, characters, and masks, creating a persona

to show the world that pleases others and acts as the ‘good girl’,

doing what is expected. These layers may originally seem imperative,

but all too often they begin to chafe and restrict, suppressing the true

beautiful and unique spirit that every woman has.

Yoga: The Four Stages of Competence

FIRST STAGE: Unconscious Incompetence

• Discovering Yoga
  People come to yoga for many different reasons including fitness,
  mindfulness and stress relief. Regardless of the reason, yoga – like a true
  master – meets us where we’re at and takes us where we long to be.
  For me, a long-time fitness aficionado, I came to yoga for
  continuing education credits. As an over-burdened corporate
  attorney and mother of two, when my gym offered me a free spot in
  a yoga teacher training immersion that would fulfill my credits all at
  once, I jumped at the chance.
  I thought that learning yoga would be a great addition to my
  repertoire, but what I discovered instead was how to accept myself
  as I was, without ever achieving mastery.

SECOND STAGE: Conscious Incompetence

• Studying Yoga
  Walking into teacher training (which also happened to be my first
  official yoga class) I thought learning yoga meant learning the
  asanas. I did not know we would study the Yoga Sutras, go in depth
  on the Eight Limbs of Yoga, and spend a month journaling about the
  application of yogic concepts in our own lives.
  As a lawyer, studying was in my nature. I loved researching,
  reading, and writing about whatever I was grappling with. And yoga
  was no exception! I dived in headfirst, learning about every tradition,
  series, flow, practice, theory or style I could. But the more I learned,
  the more I realised I did not know.

THIRD STAGE: Conscious Competence

• The Arrogance of Yoga
  As I improved, I began proving my competence, becoming
  judgemental in the process. My curiosity about the many forms of
  yoga was replaced by irritation. How dare they strip away the spiritual
  pieces, focus solely on the physical, and still call it yoga? Why were
  Americanised names used instead of the original, Sanskrit ones?
  Who did these people think they were, and why wouldn’t my gym
  friends find a real yoga studio instead of going to the weekly, half-
  baked practices they were doing at the gym?

FOURTH STAGE: Unconscious Competence

• Honouring Yoga
  And then it hit me. My so-called competence and the way I tried too
  hard to master yoga was the problem — not other people’s practices
  or philosophies. Yoga is the master, and like a good master, it meets
  students where they need to be met.
  In fact, a discipline as powerful as yoga can never be fully mastered
  and like it or not, I will be a perpetual student! Ironically, this shift

allowed me to let go of judgement, embrace where I am (not where

I want to be), and move into unconscious competence to deepen

my practice.

Mastery through the 5 steps of FLAUNT!

Letting go of what I thought yoga should look like enabled me to

strip out of preconceived ideas and beliefs and embrace a process

that I call FLAUNT! – an acronym for Find your Fetish, Laugh out

Loud, Accept Unconditionally, Navigate the Negative and Trust

in your Truth. FLAUNT helps release judgement so we can accept

ourselves unconditionally, and move into mastery, finding peace and

satisfaction along our own, imperfect journeys.

Let’s break it down:

FIND YOUR FETISH – Find something that you love to do. Not

something you ‘should’ do, or that someone else wants you to do.

Find what you love, and do it often, without apology.

LAUGH OUT LOUD – Laughter is healing, fun and can shift the energy

of an entire room. Cultivate humour by seeking out things that tickle

your funny bone, and finding other people who make you smile.

ACCEPT UNCONDITIONALLY – Like the yogic concept of non-

attachment, much of life is spent worrying about that which we

cannot control. AU is the atomic symbol for gold, and when you

accept unconditionally, you find your golden centre of clarity.

NAVIGATE THE NEGATIVE – Life is not an easy road. Sometimes

things fly off the rails and do not go as we had hoped, but these

challenges are not ‘negative’, they are simply part of the path to be

navigated. So, we might as well learn to enjoy the process.

TRUST IN YOUR TRUTH – Nobody else knows your life experience or

your truth. Whether you are unconsciously incompetent, consciously

incompetent, consciously competent, or unconsciously competent,

trust in your truth. It is the fastest way to get where you want to be.

Similar to the practice of yoga, the five steps of FLAUNT will meet you

wherever you are and lead you to exactly where you want to be!

Lora Cheadle is the author of FLAUNT! Ater 10 years of practicing

corporate law, she is now a radio host, writer, personal trainer,

burlesque performer, and yoga instructor. She ofers ‘Find Your

Sparkle’ coaching and teaches all over the world. Find out more at:

LoraCheadle.com.

Inspired by the book FLAUNT!. Copyright ©2019 by Lora Cheadle.