What? You’re not 20 anymore?
My back and neck have definitely decided they don’t want to play (see Day 6).
I can stand up, walk, ride my bike, and I can lie down…. yet moving between those two states, or turning anywhere, is excruciating!
I think I’m starting to get the message that re-emerging in to intense exercise (in this case, damned-hot-yoga), after long periods of absence, AND with a body that is 15kg overweight and on the other side of 40… is maybe not such a good idea.
Which brings me actually to a long held set of fears, judgements and insecurities around …. DRUM ROLL …. yoga!
Yoga perfection
I am in fact a trained yoga instructor. I was so in to my yoga (particularly hot yoga), from about ten years ago, that I continued my journey in to 200 hour certified yoga teacher territory. I also went on to teach over 100 classes in a busy Hobart yoga studio.
I have done a lot of Bikram Hot Yoga starting around 2003, and used to love it. There is all sorts of controversy over this style of yoga in the yoga community. Do a class and feel how good it is, and check out their testimonials. Many are profound. It’s the exact same 26 postures every time, in a 40 degree room. However, yoga teachers must stick to the exact same dialogue EVERY SINGLE TIME (for fear of not being re-accredited if they don’t know the dialogue). Teachers are not allowed to touch students and adjust their postures. Teachers are bullied if they even think about teaching for a studio that is not Bikram accredited, and not surprisingly, frequently (not always) tend to have a similar militant-no-excuses-do-what-I-say attitude to their yoga teaching.
My wondrous yoga Sydney studio, in the early 2000’s, in their wisdom at the very beginning of the huge western yoga wave, moved away from Bikram, and in to a Power Yoga style. Still hot (not so hot) and with a flowing vinyasa style. This meant that teachers could actually sequence their own classes, and use their own words of wisdom in how they chose to guide their students through a class. It was still quite a western gym-style workout (but with such still, strong, stretch and elegant poses such as dancers pose, ‘nurturing’ dialogue, and om-ing at the end). The people it attracted were young, upwardly mobile Sydney-siders, with a focus on a high-intensity workout (with spiritual benefits).
I learned that many of the things I had been encouraged to do in Bikram were actually quite detrimental to me (like massive over-arching standing back bends that totally over extended my lower spine)… anyhow….
Bikram would keep (without variation) telling us to ‘go back, more back, all back’…. push harder, feel the pain, don’t give up.
My new vinyasa yoga language was ‘listen to you body, find your edge, make the choice, breathe, take care of yourself’.
Now even with that knowledge, I would push myself beyond all sorts of limits. I felt that being sore was the only way to make progress (I didn’t know this at the time … it’s just the way I did it)!! I also thought I was doing the right thing, modifying when I needed to, resting, and playing with my edge …. yet … When I moved to the Blue Mountains a few years later and stopped yoga-ing due to logistics…. I woke up a few months later and it dawned on me. OMG I don’t feel sore anymore!!! For the first time in years, I wasn’t sore!
Fast forward a couple of years, a bunch of emerging injuries and some impressive intel from my physio and osteo, I started craving my yoga again. Armed with knowledge such as, switch on your glutes, you’re not switching on your glutes!, and keep working your VMO’s, and, your lower back is screwed because your hamstrings are so tight …. stretch your hamstrings…” I went back to yoga with a whole new (individual for me) approach.
“Do what you can do”. “Modify”. “Open up in your own time”. All things I thought I was doing before, but really, was only tinkering around the edges.
Which brings me to the emotional content of today’s post, amongst the discomfort of recovering my sore back.
Shame … shame…. shame
Looking around and seeing a room full of ‘yoga bodies’ (an error in terms because every body is a yoga body) when mine was a really over-weight and out of shape blob, and attending with the knowledge that I was a trained yoga instructor…. talk about shame people. Shame!!
Yes, I’m a determined buggar and I sucked it up anyway. I know intellectually that it’s not the point. Move my body. Yoga is for everyone. Yet, looking around that room, I’d never know that! Where are all the curvy people? Where are the curvy teachers?
I know where they are. They took one visit to the yoga room and decided they could not aspire to the perfection that is a “yoga body”, felt desperately out of place, and ran for the hills!!
Hmm, not me. I actually have the capacity to have that body. I’m quite athletic, have fantastic strength and flexibility. I could have been miss yoga pin-up! Yet, really people, my belly is a force to be reckoned with at the moment. Holy batman.
What was I meaning to say here?
The body shame. The disappointment in myself. The comparison with others. The sensation that I have such a long road to hoe. “How did I get to be here?” “Oh god, it’s so hard”.
Now, yoga is meant to be about non-violence. Non-violent both physical and mentally, toward others AND self (the latter the more challenging of the two). “God woman, you are so <enter expletive> fat. You can’t even get your hand in to the bind, you need a towel. Oh forehead to knee? Are you freaking joking? My boobs are suffocating me. Help”.
Clears throat.
Anyhow.
If I were to re-wind ten years, when I was ten kilos lighter (still needed to lose five)…. that is very similar to the dialogue then. I felt so ashamed about how heavy I was. If we had to partner up in teacher training, I was so afraid I couldn’t do stuff because of my weight. I felt like I didn’t belong. That all those sexy hot male yogi’s if they gave me any attention, then they were doing it out of ‘pity for the fat one’. (Looking back I was slim (maybe not yoga-thin) and gorgeous!
I was not fat.
So, perhaps I will learn something by writing this out because I’m not sure what the lesson is yet.
Can I face the yoga studio again?
Ok, that is a bit melodramatic, and I do know I’m not feeling great about going back to the yoga studio. The one I signed up for did what I thought was a perfect combo between Bikram postures with added vinyasa yoga thrown in, a blend of everything I love about my old yoga classes, in a 30 degree room. Just right. The aftermath of the class though has really stopped me in my tracks.
Ok OK here’s my take-out (and some preaching).
1 – Yoga is not one size fits all. Respect and know your body and don’t succumb to the pressure (your own pressure!! the implied pressure!).
2 – Modify modify modify. Rest. It’s OKAY IF EVERYONE else is doing a pose and you are not. It’s a sign of an enlightened yogini (I used to say that as a mantra to my students – resting is the sign of wisdom and advancement … no one listened).
3 – Breathe.
4 – Tap the shit out*. I’m writing this in the cafe. I will do it when I go home and write a post script on how it went. (I have been known to tap whilst in the yoga class lately too). “I’m too heavy”. OMG that’s it. “I’m too heavy” (it’s not fat. I have never really looked that fat, yet I’ve always been heavy).
5 – Still figuring this one out. You don’t have to go and kill yourself in the name of exercise and killer workout for it to be good for you! I’m attempting to come around to the Mark Whitwell philosophy that in fact, the gentler you are and the more you allow your breath to guide everything you do, the stronger you will become, the more intimate you will become with yourself and therefore the stronger and more supple you will become… through gentleness and flow.
A lifetime journey is this yoga thing that’s for sure.
My homework
Once my neck is healed, go back to the studio, use up my monthly unlimited pass, and CTFO (chill-the-f$#k-out) with my yoga practice. Like, really really just slow down go with MY breath, my pace and see how I go in the environment of packed, hot, yoga-body perfection.
Tap out the ‘I’m too heavy’ thing, and more importantly, create a vision of how I want to feel, and tap that in.
Peace love and (not mung beans … no mung beans on the Whole30) … ummm
eggs
Yes eggs
Lots of eggs
*I probably should have referenced this before, and I will go back now and do it on all posts referring to tapping…. to understand what I am on about, have a look through the hundreds of videos about FasterEFT here.
Whole30 Emotional Adventure 