Vibrational Matching
In my work, I often talk to my clients about vibrational matching between people. A vibrational match with another feels effortless as if you’ve known each other for years: as soon as you meet, you complete each other’s sentences, find each other’s jokes hysterical, love going to the same places doing the same things, and see the world similarly. It’s just so much fun for you both and it creates in each of you the feeling of expansiveness, invincibility, and thrill.
Here is a story to exemplify vibrational matching from my own life. A bit more than a decade ago, I enrolled in a Bikram yoga studio (the Netflix documentary about Bikram’s behavior with women had not yet come out, and his name was not yet unspeakable). If you’ve never been to one of those classes, you wouldn’t necessarily think of it as a whimsically fun place to be: the walls are covered with mirrors (no escaping yourself there), the temperature is 105 degrees with 40 percent humidity, and the teachers repeat the same dialogue class after class while the class performs the same 26-posture sequence.
At the time when I enrolled, my life felt fairly challenging and my way of dealing with things was to engage in constant complaining about it. While I could at least take pride in being entertaining to the listener, the reality remained that as far as the universe was concerned, my complaints only attracted more of the same and I wasn’t getting any place new. When I saw the studio, the classes sounded like I would probably die in one of them, which perfectly matched my struggle-filled life and so I went for it, intuitively knowing that I was meant to learn something beyond the physical.
… as far as the universe was concerned, my complaints only attracted more of the same and I wasn’t getting any place new.
To start with, just about everything about the classes made me feel inept, whiny, and irritably critical. The mirrors felt unforgiving and exposing and the smell of sweat, permanently embedded in the carpet, nauseating. And somehow, every time I arrived with a little time left before the class, there would already be several nearly naked, flawless-looking people in the room, bent into impressive pretzels, simultaneously performing push-ups and sit-ups while telling others about running a 10K afterward. Then, the class would start and I would be heavy with the anticipation of every posture that was difficult for me (roughly all of them, save a few). With every posture, I would sigh loudly for all to hear my great displeasure at what I was being made to do and to make sure everyone knew I sucked at all of it. Imagine a frustrated Eeyore trying to do yoga postures in front of a mirror and you’ll get the image almost exactly.
I tried out classes with many competent teachers at the studio without much change in how I felt before and during the class. However, one day I made a discovery: there was one teacher in particular who had a magical effect on my complain-y critical self: just hearing her voice made me feel like there was nothing serious going on in there and that everything was alight no matter how I was doing! Whenever she heard me sigh demonstratively, she smiled with understanding and would always find a way to praise me and shift my focus to what I was doing well as opposed to what I had yet to accomplish.
This teacher told the best most uplifting stories in class during our rest breaks and on the days when she was teaching, I found myself flying over to the studio excited to be in her presence. I was like a dried-out plant desperately in need of nourishment and she was the gardener with a never-ending stream of delicious, refreshing water to help me spring back to life. Through her, I learned to be gentler with myself, focus in on my progress, let go of dissatisfaction, and take pride in my accomplishments.
We became fast friends and have been helping support and uplift each other in all the ways we know how ever since. It was like there was never a time when we didn’t know one another and when we were together, nothing could feel bad enough to distract us from how much fun we had talking and laughing.
When my clients ask me about where the bar should be in friendships and romantic relationships, I tell them to wait to manifest their vibrational matches and not settle for the good old “something is better than nothing” way of thinking. We are here on this planet to rendezvous with each other, teach and uplift one another, and that is one of the greatest fulfillments of our purpose…
