'wow - you are so good!'
yes, yes, i am totally ok with having my ego stroked, but there are times when this statement kind of irks me. prime example - this past weekend whilst i was in bend, or. i am doing a 60 day bikram's yoga challenge, and thus went to classes at the studio there. i like going to other studios - see how they look, run, feel. it's nice to walk into a place and feel like i already have some semblance of what is going on.
but back to my ire.
the issue i take here is one that i experience myself, and also see it happen to other people - especially women. remember i wrote a while back about the yoga all-stars? well the bend studio is PACKED with them. i was by far the person in the room who looked the least fit. this led to said compliments. 'wow - you are so good,' is tinged with a hint of surprise, and should be followed by 'for someone who looks like you.'
the implication being that someone who does not have the perfect yoga body is not expected to be able to put forehead to knee in dandyamana - janushirasina (i can often), see their knee (not foot, but knee) over the top of their head in dandyamana - danurasana (on the right side at least), or do a back bend in which their arms have gone below parallel to the floor (yep - do that too). i have been practicing hard for a year, and am generally strong and coordinated. it follows that i'd be able to do some of these things. now i am not saying that i am perfect in there. i struggle with many poses, and my incessant soccer playing (and soccer injuring) keeps me from getting as far along as i'd like. but yes, people, the 'fat girl' in class...she's got game.
i put quotes around the words 'fat girl' because i am quite literally quoting a statement made about me a while back. a group of women covered in letters from one of the local sororities (i will spare them the embarrassment of sharing it here) came in for a first class. there were only three other students in the class, and we were asked to stand in front of them so our practice would demonstrate the postures. when i leaned back for my first back bend i was looking the gal two lines behind me squarely in the eye. at the end of the night these women were standing in the parking lot talking while i walked to my car. this is the exchange i overheard:
'oh my god. the fat girl in the front row was soooo good.'
'you mean the cute one with the pigtails and the nose ring? yeah she was awesome.'
that night the other two practitioners with me were a tall blond woman with a pixie cut, and an elderly gentleman. clearly they were talking about me.
this attitude does not stop at the edges of the yoga studio. i was talking with one of my students the other day about cycling. i mentioned that i used to race, and his response seemed curious. he said, 'oh...i would not have thought that from looking at you.' when i asked him what he meant by that, he got very quiet and just apologized for the statement. the truth is that we don't think of people who are heavier than the sexualized, idealized, media-created body as active, athletic, or able. when i do perform well athletically, or talk to someone about things i have done in the past, their overenthusiastic statements often end up sounding more like a condescending pat on the head rather than kindness.
also, i am not fat. i am even below average for women in america. i am in some of the best shape of my adult life. i think the only time i have been more physically fit is when i was cycle touring new zealand (riding a bike nearly 2000 miles will do that to you). so sure, i don't walk into the yoga studio in a sports bra and tiny shorts, but my blood pressure is low, i can run 6 miles easily, i can touch my palms to the ground and bend my elbows with my legs straight. i am an athlete. i am in shape. these subtle (or not so subtle) hints that i should not be able to do these things, or that it is surprising that i can, make me angry.
i am sure that the people who gave me these compliments this past weekend meant well. i am sure they wanted to be encouraging and kind. i am sure they thought it would make me feel good to have someone praise my postures. i am sure they did not mean to send me this message.
intent and impact can be so different sometimes.
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
18.1.12
21.11.11
on healing...
after 10 months of stalking people and a fair amount of begging, i've finally landed a spot on a soccer team at the sports park here in corvallis. i've not played soccer since i slogged around the pitch during college, so i was really excited when i had my first game this weekend. i only knew 2 people on the team, and we got our asses handed to us, but it was just so good to be playing again that i could have cared less. i am unsure why i let that part of me (yep, the soccer part of me) fall by the wayside so easily. initially i think it was all the weight i put on in college, and then later, living in utah, the lack of availability of a league to join. regardless, when i stepped onto the pitch yesterday it was my first game in 10 years - totally rad.
of course every action has an equal and opposite reaction (or so they say and i am generally inclined to agree), and i today i woke up feeling very much like i'd been rolled over by some kind of large vehicle. everything - and i do mean everything - hurt. my body is most definitely not accustomed to high impact exercise.
now i am not saying this to complain. quite the opposite actually. the lactic acid buildup in my muscles, the stiffness in my joints - these are things that remind me that: a) i am alive; and b) i get to participate in activities that i love. there is no bad there. even the turf burns that are swollen on my knees like wobbly golf balls indicate that: a) i am still a klutz, and thus continue to be able to laugh at myself; and b) i played as hard as i could.
the one thing that did however toss me for a loop (or more realistically, got my attention a bit more than the soreness), was that two old injuries reared their ugly heads, causing swelling and stiffness that i did not anticipate. ok, i did anticipate that my ankle would be stiff after being jostled around on the turf and subjected to my instep drive, but i did not think that my torn rotator cuff would be angry as well. both were cranky and lacked in range of motion despite years and years of rest, yoga, and physical therapy.
the shoulder was very surprising. it has been five and a half years since i, like a dumbass, rode my bicycle into a tree jed bartlet style and tore the whole thing open. despite not having health insurance, i was able to work with my dad on physical therapy, and beyond occasionally tweaking it in a climbing shock-load, it's been pretty silent. the ankle, a backcountry mishap while at work at aspen, happened a little over three years ago. the doctor was shocked when he discovered that it was not broken. it was close to black from bruising, and the swelling was so bad that my leg was one diameter from mid-calf through the top of my foot. i suppose that with all of that scar tissue it makes sense that i'll be feeling that baby for some time to come.
as i altered poses in my yoga class in order to accommodate my cantankerous joints, i thought about what it takes to fully heal from something. healing is hard. when something breaks in the body - goes the way it should not, fractures, bends, tears - one can be pretty sure that a 100% recovery is impossible. even the smallest of cuts leave scars. doctors can see where bones have healed, scar tissue limits range of motion, people lose hearing, eyesight, the use of limbs...damage to the body leaves a lasting impact.
the day after i was evacuated from the field with what we were sure was a broken ankle, the man i had been involved with for years told me he'd met someone else, and left me in an incredibly cruel way. sitting in therapy a week later, unable to walk and heartbroken, i was able to see that the healing of my body would mirror the healing of my heart. i'm really good at healing the body (well apparently not considering my stiff joints), or at least i know what goes into healing. as a lifelong athlete i've had my fair share of sprains, strains, and dislocations. i understood that time, rest, patience, and care would eventually lead me to be well again. i decided i would apply this kind of healing to the pain of what had just happened to me.
as metaphors go, this one is pretty damn good if you ask me. not only can we heal our emotional wounds by applying the same methods as we do to physical ones, they also resurface at times when we least expect it. not unlike my stiff ankle and shoulder, some of the hurts and pains of my life have come up recently. a year after being offered the job here at oregon state, i am starting to work through some of the things that happened during 2010, and even some of the start of 2011. i am remembering the pain and shame of experiences i had while trying to pay bills, make ends meet, and survive living in my car in the cold. recently i've been waking up not knowing where i am, or being surprised i am in a bed. when i drove to idaho i felt paranoid about traveling without water, food, and a sleeping bag in my car. these things, just like the soreness of old injuries, came up when i did not expect them.
so what to do? well with the ankle and shoulder i am gonna r.i.c.e. that shit, change up my yoga routine, and probably tape the ankle before the next game. but the rest...well i suppose these things will start to settle out with time. i know that talking at the faces of homelessness panel helped me to put words to feelings and events that i'd kept in for the most part. having those honored in a public forum helped. i also have spent a good amount of time meditating. in meditation one can start to untie the knots that are formed in one's psyche. the problem is that, just like physical therapy, it hurts. also the act of opening oneself up to the untying only surfaces more knots. this can be exhausting, and i am often tempted to just stop and block it all up again. sometimes there is just too much. i noted to a friend tonight that there are times when it seems that living life is synonymous with getting hurt.
of course i don't actually believe that.
today i wrote a new song. i am very proud of it both because the guitar part is beautiful and i am very excited that i am able to play it, and because it represents another form of healing. i spent a great amount of time looking at my most recent relationship - what was good, what went wrong, and what i'd like it to become - and i put it into music. writing it was beautiful and painful. when it was done i played it through a number of times as if the singing of the song would somehow draw out the pain and leave me without the stiffness of emotional scar tissue. after running through it more times than i can count, i realized that though the song is for one person in particular, it applies to the lot of my relationships. music - another way to untie the knots.
i will say though that despite all of these attempts to heal, there will always be a part of me that is altered by my experiences. just like the scar on my thumb from when i took a knife through it to the bone, the creaking in my knee from the torn meniscus, or the stiffness in my joints after a soccer game, the emotional injuries will push me to be a slightly different person. i don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing. having reminders of past injuries can help us to avoid new ones. the trick is not to let them box us in. just because i almost broke my ankle does not mean i should not play soccer now, just as having been through a bad breakup does not mean i should not look for someone to love. that said, the scars can serve as reminders of things we don't want to relive. they make us wiser. if we honor these experiences we learn from them and become stronger people.
i guess this means i have to honor my cranky shoulder - shit.
of course every action has an equal and opposite reaction (or so they say and i am generally inclined to agree), and i today i woke up feeling very much like i'd been rolled over by some kind of large vehicle. everything - and i do mean everything - hurt. my body is most definitely not accustomed to high impact exercise.
now i am not saying this to complain. quite the opposite actually. the lactic acid buildup in my muscles, the stiffness in my joints - these are things that remind me that: a) i am alive; and b) i get to participate in activities that i love. there is no bad there. even the turf burns that are swollen on my knees like wobbly golf balls indicate that: a) i am still a klutz, and thus continue to be able to laugh at myself; and b) i played as hard as i could.
the one thing that did however toss me for a loop (or more realistically, got my attention a bit more than the soreness), was that two old injuries reared their ugly heads, causing swelling and stiffness that i did not anticipate. ok, i did anticipate that my ankle would be stiff after being jostled around on the turf and subjected to my instep drive, but i did not think that my torn rotator cuff would be angry as well. both were cranky and lacked in range of motion despite years and years of rest, yoga, and physical therapy.
the shoulder was very surprising. it has been five and a half years since i, like a dumbass, rode my bicycle into a tree jed bartlet style and tore the whole thing open. despite not having health insurance, i was able to work with my dad on physical therapy, and beyond occasionally tweaking it in a climbing shock-load, it's been pretty silent. the ankle, a backcountry mishap while at work at aspen, happened a little over three years ago. the doctor was shocked when he discovered that it was not broken. it was close to black from bruising, and the swelling was so bad that my leg was one diameter from mid-calf through the top of my foot. i suppose that with all of that scar tissue it makes sense that i'll be feeling that baby for some time to come.
as i altered poses in my yoga class in order to accommodate my cantankerous joints, i thought about what it takes to fully heal from something. healing is hard. when something breaks in the body - goes the way it should not, fractures, bends, tears - one can be pretty sure that a 100% recovery is impossible. even the smallest of cuts leave scars. doctors can see where bones have healed, scar tissue limits range of motion, people lose hearing, eyesight, the use of limbs...damage to the body leaves a lasting impact.
the day after i was evacuated from the field with what we were sure was a broken ankle, the man i had been involved with for years told me he'd met someone else, and left me in an incredibly cruel way. sitting in therapy a week later, unable to walk and heartbroken, i was able to see that the healing of my body would mirror the healing of my heart. i'm really good at healing the body (well apparently not considering my stiff joints), or at least i know what goes into healing. as a lifelong athlete i've had my fair share of sprains, strains, and dislocations. i understood that time, rest, patience, and care would eventually lead me to be well again. i decided i would apply this kind of healing to the pain of what had just happened to me.
as metaphors go, this one is pretty damn good if you ask me. not only can we heal our emotional wounds by applying the same methods as we do to physical ones, they also resurface at times when we least expect it. not unlike my stiff ankle and shoulder, some of the hurts and pains of my life have come up recently. a year after being offered the job here at oregon state, i am starting to work through some of the things that happened during 2010, and even some of the start of 2011. i am remembering the pain and shame of experiences i had while trying to pay bills, make ends meet, and survive living in my car in the cold. recently i've been waking up not knowing where i am, or being surprised i am in a bed. when i drove to idaho i felt paranoid about traveling without water, food, and a sleeping bag in my car. these things, just like the soreness of old injuries, came up when i did not expect them.
so what to do? well with the ankle and shoulder i am gonna r.i.c.e. that shit, change up my yoga routine, and probably tape the ankle before the next game. but the rest...well i suppose these things will start to settle out with time. i know that talking at the faces of homelessness panel helped me to put words to feelings and events that i'd kept in for the most part. having those honored in a public forum helped. i also have spent a good amount of time meditating. in meditation one can start to untie the knots that are formed in one's psyche. the problem is that, just like physical therapy, it hurts. also the act of opening oneself up to the untying only surfaces more knots. this can be exhausting, and i am often tempted to just stop and block it all up again. sometimes there is just too much. i noted to a friend tonight that there are times when it seems that living life is synonymous with getting hurt.
of course i don't actually believe that.
today i wrote a new song. i am very proud of it both because the guitar part is beautiful and i am very excited that i am able to play it, and because it represents another form of healing. i spent a great amount of time looking at my most recent relationship - what was good, what went wrong, and what i'd like it to become - and i put it into music. writing it was beautiful and painful. when it was done i played it through a number of times as if the singing of the song would somehow draw out the pain and leave me without the stiffness of emotional scar tissue. after running through it more times than i can count, i realized that though the song is for one person in particular, it applies to the lot of my relationships. music - another way to untie the knots.
i will say though that despite all of these attempts to heal, there will always be a part of me that is altered by my experiences. just like the scar on my thumb from when i took a knife through it to the bone, the creaking in my knee from the torn meniscus, or the stiffness in my joints after a soccer game, the emotional injuries will push me to be a slightly different person. i don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing. having reminders of past injuries can help us to avoid new ones. the trick is not to let them box us in. just because i almost broke my ankle does not mean i should not play soccer now, just as having been through a bad breakup does not mean i should not look for someone to love. that said, the scars can serve as reminders of things we don't want to relive. they make us wiser. if we honor these experiences we learn from them and become stronger people.
i guess this means i have to honor my cranky shoulder - shit.
16.10.11
joy and sorrow are lovers
was laid low this past week with a terrible cold that sapped me of energy, made it difficult to breathe, pounded in my head, and robbed me of my voice (that last one is miserable for me). i am a terrible sick person in that i either a) get terribly grouchy and
whiny and hard to be around or b) i deny that i am sick and, as a result, get even sicker. i went with option b this time around, and at one point it got bad enough that my students sent me home from work and i slept for 18 hours.
i also did not get to my yoga for 8 days. this was disappointing because i had managed to string up 7 days straight and i was feeling like i was getting to new places on all planes - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. the most prevalent of those being on the edge between physical and emotional - anxiety. i struggle with this beast of a feeling every day - it wants to creep through my chest and into my throat and neck giving me jitters and leaving me feeling unable to manage myself.
the kicker is that it is pretty much tied to feeling any kind of emotion - positive or negative. i can get on board with anxiety being tied to negative emotion. who wants to feel sad or mad or stressed? of course that will trigger anxiety. what i find challenging is that my positive emotions also breed this feeling - sometimes more than the negative. one time in therapy i got very, very angry about this - part of a 'why me' reaction to life in general - and my therapist gregory just smiled (oh how mad i got at him when he did that!), and told me something beautiful. 'joy and sorrow are lovers, clare. just like light and shadow. you can't invite one of them into your heart without the other.'
as my life continues to get better and better (let's face it, things were a little bleak there for a while), i am becoming more and more aware of how my anxiety is rising up to join me. doing something good for yourself can often lead to negative effects in the short-term...stretching releases toxins that can lead to nausea, therapy can unearth repressed memories and feelings that cause unbearable pain. for me, the release of the 'world, don't kick me any more' crouch has led to a flow of emotion that is drawing the negative out of me like poison. unfortunately the net result has been intense insomnia and anxiety that has at least a couple of times this year, kept me from getting in to work. the last time i was dealing with this heavy a dose of it i was a senior in college and it activated my tachycardia. i have no interest in ending up in the emergency room.
cue yoga.
i have always understood that a yogic practice could be positive for me. body work, particularly of the exercise variety has always helped me to deal with the challenges of life. that said, i did not imagine that practicing yoga regularly could bring my anxiety levels down almost to nil. the first i noted it was during my worst week in corvallis - work had gotten out of control, i was processing the end of a relationship, and i had managed to stress myself into tension cramping in my neck where i could no longer turn my head. i stood in that hot room feeling totally broken, listening to elizabeth run us through the dialogue. somewhere in the back of my head i just-let-go. the breathing became the only thing i cared about, and i smoothly moved through the poses without pain or stress. by the end of the class i felt calm and the neck issues had disappeared.
tich nhat hanh talks about the transformation of emotion into something that can be integrated into the self rather than existing as an external entity that one ends up fighting. i think that is what yoga is helping me to do. the energy of emotion becomes dispersed into my breath and flows through me rather than pushing up against me. just as i can breathe air into my body and use it to strengthen and nourish me, i can draw upon my emotions to strengthen and nourish my heart. just as i breathe out the air carries away toxins, i can harness the emotion to draw my anxiety out and leave me calm. when joy comes and sorry follows her across the threshold i can hear gregory's voice asking 'is it tolerable?' so many times back then it was not. now i am finding that i can welcome them both in at once, breathe them a smile, and sit for a while.
i was sooooo glad to get back to my practice today. the week i've had off has been filled with lots of strong emotions of all kinds, and i was feeling my anxiety setting up shop back in my chest. next goal - figuring out how to harness the power of emotional transformation at home.
i also did not get to my yoga for 8 days. this was disappointing because i had managed to string up 7 days straight and i was feeling like i was getting to new places on all planes - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. the most prevalent of those being on the edge between physical and emotional - anxiety. i struggle with this beast of a feeling every day - it wants to creep through my chest and into my throat and neck giving me jitters and leaving me feeling unable to manage myself.
the kicker is that it is pretty much tied to feeling any kind of emotion - positive or negative. i can get on board with anxiety being tied to negative emotion. who wants to feel sad or mad or stressed? of course that will trigger anxiety. what i find challenging is that my positive emotions also breed this feeling - sometimes more than the negative. one time in therapy i got very, very angry about this - part of a 'why me' reaction to life in general - and my therapist gregory just smiled (oh how mad i got at him when he did that!), and told me something beautiful. 'joy and sorrow are lovers, clare. just like light and shadow. you can't invite one of them into your heart without the other.'
as my life continues to get better and better (let's face it, things were a little bleak there for a while), i am becoming more and more aware of how my anxiety is rising up to join me. doing something good for yourself can often lead to negative effects in the short-term...stretching releases toxins that can lead to nausea, therapy can unearth repressed memories and feelings that cause unbearable pain. for me, the release of the 'world, don't kick me any more' crouch has led to a flow of emotion that is drawing the negative out of me like poison. unfortunately the net result has been intense insomnia and anxiety that has at least a couple of times this year, kept me from getting in to work. the last time i was dealing with this heavy a dose of it i was a senior in college and it activated my tachycardia. i have no interest in ending up in the emergency room.
cue yoga.
i have always understood that a yogic practice could be positive for me. body work, particularly of the exercise variety has always helped me to deal with the challenges of life. that said, i did not imagine that practicing yoga regularly could bring my anxiety levels down almost to nil. the first i noted it was during my worst week in corvallis - work had gotten out of control, i was processing the end of a relationship, and i had managed to stress myself into tension cramping in my neck where i could no longer turn my head. i stood in that hot room feeling totally broken, listening to elizabeth run us through the dialogue. somewhere in the back of my head i just-let-go. the breathing became the only thing i cared about, and i smoothly moved through the poses without pain or stress. by the end of the class i felt calm and the neck issues had disappeared.
tich nhat hanh talks about the transformation of emotion into something that can be integrated into the self rather than existing as an external entity that one ends up fighting. i think that is what yoga is helping me to do. the energy of emotion becomes dispersed into my breath and flows through me rather than pushing up against me. just as i can breathe air into my body and use it to strengthen and nourish me, i can draw upon my emotions to strengthen and nourish my heart. just as i breathe out the air carries away toxins, i can harness the emotion to draw my anxiety out and leave me calm. when joy comes and sorry follows her across the threshold i can hear gregory's voice asking 'is it tolerable?' so many times back then it was not. now i am finding that i can welcome them both in at once, breathe them a smile, and sit for a while.
i was sooooo glad to get back to my practice today. the week i've had off has been filled with lots of strong emotions of all kinds, and i was feeling my anxiety setting up shop back in my chest. next goal - figuring out how to harness the power of emotional transformation at home.
7.9.11
all hail the yoga all-stars
have been doing bikram yoga for the past 8 months. i really enjoy it. i like the heat and how it helped me to finally enjoy stretching. i like the fact that my lungs feel stronger and i can hold a note longer when i sing. i like that i can now feel into my body and have a greater understanding of what is happening inside of me. i like that i am stronger and have better balance. all in all my yoga experience has been pretty awesome.
i've done a number of other kinds of yoga. i've done sun salutations, enjoyed deep long meditative poses, stood on my head, and done the low slow flow. bikram has been a very different experience for me. first, it is the only yoga i've done where i have felt i've advanced. i think that the very athletic nature of the yoga appeals to me - that and the fact that we do the same poses every time. i get to work hard and see my progress. it's heartening. second, the yoga crowd is different. bikram is a very very american version of yoga. the poses and postures are not, but it is inherently capitalist in nature. it is franchised, automated, and monetized. it is completely macdonaldized. sometimes when i think about this it makes me want to walk out - to say to heck with it and find something more traditional. other times i take a lot of comfort in the fact that when I go to another bikram studio elsewhere, the experience will be the same. as a result of this balanced dichotomy, all kinds come to bikram. college students, hippies, housewives, hipsters, body builders, runners, rich, poor, old, kids, people of all races - it is a cornucopia of people who all come for different reasons to get the same thing. the other day i got to class to see a coach bag hanging right next to a homemade crocheted one. some women in the locker room talk about how they love their bmw's - others talk about how they will only eat eggs from 'happy chickens' - priceless.
the one thing that i find the same across all yoga classes is one demographic - the yoga all stars. if you have ever taken a yoga class you already know about whom i refer. they are the perfect, the amazing, the strong, the beautiful. they walk into class, tall and thin, washboard abs already tensed and toned. they wear perfect yoga costumes that always match. they walk in with perfect posture. these are the people whose bodies seem to be made for yoga. no matter what, they are flawless in their postures, amazingly strong, and ridiculously flexible - gods and goddesses, superheroes really.
i try so hard not to hate them.
yeah, i know, i am in class for me. i am not supposed to compare myself to others. this is about my health and confidence and well-being. however i grew up in a world where body image is distorted as a female and an athlete. once when I was doing situps at the gym at clark another student called out to me, 'keep going, you need it.' i'm self-conscious no matter how hard i try not to be. i do my best to concentrate on my own figure in the mirror and remind myself that i am beautiful and strong and amazing too.
other times, i try so hard not to stare at them.
these are amazing people! when i am able to manage my own self-consciousness i just think they are so incredible and beautiful that i catch myself starting. they can bend lower, stretch higher, and do more than i can and i am in awe. i am sure that this could be uncomfortable for these people. who really wants to go to their class to better themselves and find someone staring up the back of their ass all night? i could make the argument that hey, the way they look the should just expect it, but that would align me with people who say that a woman who dresses sexily deserves to be raped. clearly not excusable behavior.
but then again, we are all yoga all stars in the end. in a bikram class you go through 26 postures. the odds are low that there is not at least one pose that you could do exceptionally well. most of my teachers don't point out individuals for praise, but those who do often end up saying something kind to every person in the room over a class. i myself am very proud of my standing bow pose and by half locust. tonight one of the women in my class, who you would never pick out as an all-star, was asked to demonstrate her standing head to knee. i marveled at her strength and balance as she stood up in front of class and showed us her perfect posture. she beamed at the chance.
i can't say that i won't have that continual internal yoyo of emotion about the pretty pretty people who come into my class in cute clothes and make us all look like yutzes rather than yogis, but i do like that i can keep some perspective on it.
all hail the yoga all-stars!
i've done a number of other kinds of yoga. i've done sun salutations, enjoyed deep long meditative poses, stood on my head, and done the low slow flow. bikram has been a very different experience for me. first, it is the only yoga i've done where i have felt i've advanced. i think that the very athletic nature of the yoga appeals to me - that and the fact that we do the same poses every time. i get to work hard and see my progress. it's heartening. second, the yoga crowd is different. bikram is a very very american version of yoga. the poses and postures are not, but it is inherently capitalist in nature. it is franchised, automated, and monetized. it is completely macdonaldized. sometimes when i think about this it makes me want to walk out - to say to heck with it and find something more traditional. other times i take a lot of comfort in the fact that when I go to another bikram studio elsewhere, the experience will be the same. as a result of this balanced dichotomy, all kinds come to bikram. college students, hippies, housewives, hipsters, body builders, runners, rich, poor, old, kids, people of all races - it is a cornucopia of people who all come for different reasons to get the same thing. the other day i got to class to see a coach bag hanging right next to a homemade crocheted one. some women in the locker room talk about how they love their bmw's - others talk about how they will only eat eggs from 'happy chickens' - priceless.
the one thing that i find the same across all yoga classes is one demographic - the yoga all stars. if you have ever taken a yoga class you already know about whom i refer. they are the perfect, the amazing, the strong, the beautiful. they walk into class, tall and thin, washboard abs already tensed and toned. they wear perfect yoga costumes that always match. they walk in with perfect posture. these are the people whose bodies seem to be made for yoga. no matter what, they are flawless in their postures, amazingly strong, and ridiculously flexible - gods and goddesses, superheroes really.
i try so hard not to hate them.
yeah, i know, i am in class for me. i am not supposed to compare myself to others. this is about my health and confidence and well-being. however i grew up in a world where body image is distorted as a female and an athlete. once when I was doing situps at the gym at clark another student called out to me, 'keep going, you need it.' i'm self-conscious no matter how hard i try not to be. i do my best to concentrate on my own figure in the mirror and remind myself that i am beautiful and strong and amazing too.
other times, i try so hard not to stare at them.
these are amazing people! when i am able to manage my own self-consciousness i just think they are so incredible and beautiful that i catch myself starting. they can bend lower, stretch higher, and do more than i can and i am in awe. i am sure that this could be uncomfortable for these people. who really wants to go to their class to better themselves and find someone staring up the back of their ass all night? i could make the argument that hey, the way they look the should just expect it, but that would align me with people who say that a woman who dresses sexily deserves to be raped. clearly not excusable behavior.
but then again, we are all yoga all stars in the end. in a bikram class you go through 26 postures. the odds are low that there is not at least one pose that you could do exceptionally well. most of my teachers don't point out individuals for praise, but those who do often end up saying something kind to every person in the room over a class. i myself am very proud of my standing bow pose and by half locust. tonight one of the women in my class, who you would never pick out as an all-star, was asked to demonstrate her standing head to knee. i marveled at her strength and balance as she stood up in front of class and showed us her perfect posture. she beamed at the chance.
i can't say that i won't have that continual internal yoyo of emotion about the pretty pretty people who come into my class in cute clothes and make us all look like yutzes rather than yogis, but i do like that i can keep some perspective on it.
all hail the yoga all-stars!
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