The teacher says it gently, as if it were nothing.
Do each pose at sixty percent. No more.
Something in me goes very still — and then starts to argue. Sixty percent of what? Measured how? And why hold back, when the body can go further?
Just because I can.
For most of my life, that was reason enough.
I learned my body in front of a mirror.
As a child in ballet class, I knew where my arm was by looking at it. The line was right when it looked right. The mirror told me, and the teacher standing beside it confirmed.
It was a faithful teacher, in its way. It showed me the shape.
It never once showed me what the shape asked of me.
Years later, the rooms I practise in have no mirrors. I no longer glance at the person on the next mat. No one is grading.
And still — perfect form.
Still the push to the edge. Still the quiet satisfaction of going further than asked.
Picture a dancer after the performance. The curtain has come down. The theatre is empty, the lights are off, the audience has long gone home. And she is still holding her posture — in the dressing room, in the car, at her own kitchen table.
Nobody is watching. Nobody is keeping score.
Something in her hasn't heard that the show is over.
So when the teacher says sixty percent, I try. Of course I try.
To find sixty, I first have to know what a hundred is today. And today's hundred isn't yesterday's. No mirror can show me that.
You know what sixty feels like. Never what it looks like.
A different kind of effort.
And within a few breaths, a familiar voice arrives. Is this sixty? It feels more like fifty. You could do a little more and still call it sixty. Are you doing less correctly?
The auditor.
She hasn't quite fully retired. She has simply read the new instructions.
This is the thing about her — she doesn't need the old standard. Any standard will do. Give her rest, and she'll grade the rest. Give her softness, and she'll check whether it's soft enough.
She doesn't leave. She changes costume.
Listen to her long enough, and something else becomes clear. She is always building a case. Arguing. Persuading. Insisting.
She needs to be believed.
Which means she, too, is performing — and her audience is me.
I've been her audience all along.
There is another kind of knowing that doesn't argue. It has no one to convince.
Why does she stay, when she is so tiring?
Because she is familiar. Pushing to the limit is exhausting — and also, strangely, comfortable. At a hundred and ten percent, I know how I stand.
The mirror told me where I was. So did she. Being watched, even by an imagined eye, can feel like being in position.
So on the days I have everything, I give a hundred and ten. And on the days I have far less, I give a hundred and ten anyway — and dig out the difference from somewhere.
The body knows where. It is always the body that makes up the difference.
Some seasons truly do ask for everything. That isn't the question. The question is whether every day has quietly become one of those seasons — just because it's familiar.
She follows me into kindness too.
Most of us know exactly what giving everything feels like. Ask for a little more gentleness toward ourselves, and suddenly it's complicated. How much gentler? Compared to what? Am I doing it right?
Giving everything has edges to push against. The small has only the inside.
And so she steps in to help. She measures the kindness. She grades the gentleness. She makes sure you are being soft enough with yourself.
A small kindness doesn't need to be counted to be real.
It only needs to happen.
Back on the mat.
A pose I've done a thousand times. I come in slowly — and stop, somewhere short of where I usually go.
She begins her case. You could go further. This isn't really sixty. Is this even practice?
I hear her. I don't argue.
I simply don't need to be convinced.
And nothing collapses. The breath goes in. The breath goes out. The pose is complete — before anyone has decided whether it was done well.
A performance continues as long as there is an audience.
I am still here. I'm just not watching anymore.
Wherever you are as you read this — at a desk, on a mat, halfway through a day that isn't asking for even a hundred —
and something in you insists that holding any less will make it all collapse —
