Sometimes Just Being Is Enough

The feminist writer bell hooks has noted that “teaching is a performative act.” Years of working as a Women’s Studies professor has taught me the truth of that observation. Not only is one in front of a group of people as a professor—or as a yoga teacher—but one’s job is to engage them in an active learning process. For me, it brings out a performative nature that I did not know I had growing up as a shy, bookish, only child.

But “being on” also takes its toll, especially if one is as introverted as I am. I can relish, excel, and enjoy the performative nature of my work, but sometimes I hit a wall and I just don’t feel like “being on.” And yet, as they say, the “show must go on.”

Yoga has taught me how to just be in those moments. Each week when we enter our yoga class, we are in different moods with different states of energy and different distractions. The self-reflection we develop through our practice helps us learn how to access deeper layers, regardless of the circumstances. The result is often an intensely transformative educational moment.

Once, when I was first learning to be a yoga teacher, I had a vibrant and witty lesson planned. Then I walked into the yoga studio to teach my first mini-class to a group of other yoga teachers while being observed by a senior yoga teacher, and all my anxiety arose. What if I wasn’t any good? These were experienced teachers, I thought; they would all be so much more talented than I. Who did I think I was?! My heart started racing.

Normally, I would have just bluffed and put on the performance. But the self-awareness and mindfulness that yoga has taught me has opened a deeper possibility: turning inward and offering a teaching from where I am at that moment.

In this case, I scrapped my plan. Instead, I delved into the fears and anxieties I was feeling, and created a class plan from what I learned through that exploration. I used my fears as a way to open and connect with students, instead of a way to shut them out. My theme for that day was how to witness anxieties without clinging to them or pushing them away, a theme which I wove throughout our poses. We were then all—students and teacher alike—able to practice how to meet our responses with skillful acceptance, compassion, and humor.

This ability to turn inward and teach the material from where I am has often produced a profoundly authentic and transformative experience, both in the yoga studio and in my academic classrooms. I have entered feminist classes with the same philosophy of allowing what is. Those classes have often become turning points in the semester for students to own the material for themselves in new ways.

What yoga has offered, then, is this simple but powerful understanding: Often, just being authentically present and self-aware is more than enough.

Receiving the Gift of Feedback

Life really is a Shakesperian comedy at times. Last week, my blog post carefully laid out my philosophy on mentoring. I pontificated, quite sincerely, about how I strive to create a supportive environment for constructive criticism in my Women’s Studies classrooms so that we can all grow to our full potentials.

Then what happened?

I got critiqued. My partner, Amy, offered me suggestions about what I was doing that wasn’t really working and how I could improve. They were insightful and helpful.….And, well, all my baggage arose. I got defensive, hurt, and a little angry.

Funny how life offers us opportunities to learn what we need to learn. It’s never easy to take criticism, particularly when it’s regarding something about which we care deeply and have tried to do our best. In this case, Amy offered helpful feedback designed to be supportive, but it wasn’t easy to receive it as such.

I wondered, as she and I processed the interaction and the feelings it brought up for both of us, why I reacted so differently to this incident than I did to the suggestions of my yoga teacher earlier in the week. What makes some guidance feel like support and others like threats?

In my Intermediate yoga class, we were doing hip openers, leading up to Eka Pada Sirsasana (Foot Behind the Head Pose). My teacher, Ali, had us lie on our backs and guided us through how to put our ankle behind our head, then how to sit up while maintaining that position. Yes, that’s right, I said sit up, with our ankle behind our head. Some of my classmates were even able to stand up.

But I struggled. At one point, Ali suggested that I pause, and then she guided me through how to more productively align my body to get my shoulder more successfully under my foot. Why, I wonder, did that moment feel so helpful while the interaction with Amy felt like criticism? Why did I take one suggestion as encouragement and another as invalidation?

I think it’s because on the mat, I am embodied first. I have let go of concerns that I might look stupid or disappoint (I am trying to put my foot behind my head, after all!) And I don’t attach judgement to my teacher’s suggestions. I simply try it and see how I experience the result. When sensations or emotions arise, the poses offer a safe place to explore and move through them to make life affirming choices.

In yoga, I have given myself the permission to be a learner, and that means allowing myself to not be good at something. That perspective is harder to embrace in our personal lives, but we can often grow much more when we allow ourselves to embody the openness of inquiry. In yoga, I am not attached to outcome. I don’t care whether I can stand up today with my foot behind my head. I am much more interested in what I can learn in the process of trying to do so, and that nonattachment helps me make more life affirming choices about how I react to things.

Relationships offer us deeply fertile ground to cultivate that resilience. With loved ones, we often get caught in our reactions instead of fully embodying them, letting them pass, and then mindfully deciding the best course of action. When we can give ourselves permission to be a learner, we can better receive the gifts of the experience.

Learning to Achieve Our Potenial

I’ve already confessed to being a groupie of the television show “So You Think You Can Dance.” It stands out from other reality TV shows in part because of the relationship between the “judges” and the contestants. There is critique. There is constructive criticism. There is even competition. But it’s all done in a supportive way that is designed to help a dancer achieve his or her full potential. Unlike most reality TV shows, the tone of the feedback is not catty, sensationalized, or cruel. It’s done as a kind of mentoring to encourage and challenge people to excel beyond what they thought they could do.

That is the environment that I strive to create in my feminist classroom. One that is inspiring, mutually supportive, and challenging. One in which the collective elevates every individual to strive for their best. For me, feminist teaching and mentoring means helping students think outside their box and creating a collaborative learning environment in which everyone grows together in different ways to create a whole that is more vibrant than we could have imagined.

But that type of environment is a bit counter-cultural. It’s unfamiliar for many of us. Far too often, U.S. culture breeds a kind of dog-eat-dog climate, in which only one person can “win.” Look at the typical reality TV show—it’s rarely about collaborative teamwork so that everyone can accomplish a goal and succeed to the end. Instead, people undercut and betray each other, play on each other’s weaknesses, and strive to win at the expense of others. These shows continue because viewers like to watch that drama.

Unfortunately, higher education is not immune to these cultural pressures. Students know that they need to work in groups, but they haven’t necessarily learned true collaboration. What’s worse, there is often still this underlying ideology that one can only succeed if others do not. That the places where one has not yet achieved one’s potential are weaknesses and flaws, rather than possibilities. That one grows by declaiming someone else. Women in particular have often learned to compare ourselves to one another and consider it a failure if we find ourselves “deficient.” As a feminist teacher, I have to work against these cultural tenets to create a more supportive yet challenging climate in my classrooms.

Anusara Yoga has offered me some techniques for doing so. In my Anusara classes, we genuinely cheer one another when someone has a “yoga moment” and does a new pose for the first time. We are inspired when someone embodies a pose we cannot—it invigorates us rather than invalidates us. Our practice is a journey of growth, not a race to the finish line. While we admire and support our fellow classmates, we don’t compare ourselves to them. As John Friend describes it, it’s a philosophy of “Yes, I see that I’m good and I can also expand and evolve that goodness in its artistry.” It’s also about embodying the “intention of wanting to help each other experience the ultimate freedom in every expanding moment of the artistry of life.”[i]

My Anusara classes have truly shown me what it feels like to learn in an environment in which we are all already enough. It’s a climate I strive to create in my feminist classrooms. We all have potentials to grow into. We start from a place of validity and worth, and we support and inspire one another to blossom from there into directions we haven’t even imagined.

[i] John Friend’s Blog, “The Art of Feedback.” Anusara. 13 August 2009. http://www.anusara.com/index.php?option=com_wpmu&blog_id=2&Itemid=250

Finding Our Place in the Family of Things*

I just returned from five days visiting old friends in Central NY, a place that still rings as home to me. There, I reconnected with people I consider family, nourished my love for the Finger Lakes countryside, and relished in the sense of belonging that I felt in my bones the minute I arrived. Jamming to the Bee Gees, sailing, kayaking, and hanging out by a bonfire under the moonlight, I was reminded of the centrality of interconnection to a sense of well-being.

In Tantric philosophy, Divine energy pervades every living being and therefore weaves a deep web of interdependence. In fact, Anusara™ Yoga places the yoga kula, or community, as one of its top three principles. The collectivity of the yoga kula raises the quality of everyone in it. It creates a symbiotic relationship wherein the collective strengthens the individual, which then in turn strengthens the whole.

Feminism also emphasizes the relationship between the individual and the collective, the personal and the structural. Large scale change occurs when we work together, each taking our responsibility for our part in the greater good. Both Anusara™ Yoga and feminism recognize the value of community. It helps us feel connected. It reveals our interdependence. It offers us support and the gift of supporting others. It helps us find our place in the “family of things.” In doing so, it enables us to blossom into our full potential.

Try it:

Vrksasana (Tree Pose): Gather in a circle with your Yoga Kula, interlace your arms, and take tree pose. Then, striking a balance between standing on your own and leaning on one another for support, lean back. You can more easily add a small back bend to tree pose when you can receive the support of one another.

Partner Stretch: Take a good Tadasana. Your partner will stand behind you, take a good solid stance, and hold your wrists. With that support, you can fall forward as far as feels comfortable, trusting that your community will support you. Lead with your heart, and communicate with one another to ensure a safe and exhilarating stretch of body, mind, and heart.

*The title is a reference to Mary Oliver’s poem, “Wild Geese”

Moving From Within

Ok. So I have just discovered the So You Think You Can Dance television show this summer. I am hooked! Now in its fifth season, the show features professional dancers who get weekly challenges with professional choreographers and compete to become “America’s Favorite Dancer.”

As a feminist pop culture critic, I see the flaws with this and every other reality show. But what intrigues me about So You Think You Can Dance is how profoundly “moving” the performances are, with top notch dancers and seasoned choreographers. The performances stir something. They inspire. They intrigue. As the show’s producer points out, dance is a medium for emotions that cannot be expressed any other way.

Good dance, like yoga, comes from a place of deep embodiment. Many physical activities in the U.S. are about mind over body, or about achieving a particular body type. Anusara® Yoga, on the other hand, comes from a pavriti perspective. Unlike the nivriti perspective that seeks to transcend the body, the pavriti path celebrates the body as a key part of our integrated experience.

Anusara® Yoga, then, is about honoring our bodies as part of our holistic experience. We move from core to periphery, so that our actions come from the inside out. We have to first come into our hearts and know who we are, then expand out and share that with the world. This yoga recognizes that our bodies have wisdom and helps us cultivate our connection with that wisdom.

This is a profound shift in a culture that often encourages disembodiment. Women are particularly susceptible to disembodiment. We are barraged by objectifying images around us and often experience sexism in our daily lives. For survivors of trauma, disembodiment is often a survival mechanism. The detachment and isolation that results from this disconnection with our bodies has a price.

But we cannot merely tell people to become embodied. If we are living a disembodied life, we often don’t even know the full extent of it, much less how to change it. Physical practices like yoga can help heighten our experiences of embodiment. Yoga offers tools through which to become aware of our bodily experiences with compassion and affirmation. This compassionate self-reflection, along with the support of a yoga kula (community), is key.

I used to think that I didn’t understand dance, so I rarely went to performances. I wanted “get it” intellectually when the true heart of dance is to feel it emotionally and physically. My practice on the mat has changed that. Yoga has opened new doors for how to participate and make sense of the world.

Learning How to Listen

So why do many yoga classes begin with a brief meditation and then end with Savasana? These practices help ground us. We can quiet our minds, scan our bodies, emotions, and minds to see what we need that day, and, at the end, fully receive the gifts of our practice. Unlike exercises that are about mind over matter to achieve a goal, Anusara® yoga is about listening to our inner experience so it can inform and dialogue with external ones.

But how do we learn to listen? This is not an automatic skill. Women in particular often have trouble finding their inner voice when gendered socialization often pressures us to subsume our needs to those of others. Cultivating a clear listening to our inner experience, and learning how to appropriately integrate the inner and outer worlds, is a skill we can—and must--learn.

Many top universities recognize the value of what Brown University’s Contemplative Studies Initiative calls “critical first person” study.[i] This type of study involves a curious inquiry of one’s inner experience, and then an ability to step back and examine the significance and meaning of that experience. Practitioners learn how to integrate their internal experiences with the third person study that is more traditional in many educational contexts.

Yoga is one of many powerful tools through which we can learn this “critical first person” study. It can help us not only find a clear inner voice, but also examine how the personal is political. In Anusara® yoga, we move from the core to periphery. We turn inward and allow that awareness to motivate our external actions. And we then take what we learn from our outer experiences to inform our internal ones. It’s a mutually enriching process.

Try it:

Ardha Chandrachapasana: From Ardha Chandrasana, bow forward to find your core and to grasp your foot, then extend your foot and head back. Find your extension only after connecting within.






[i] http://www.brown.edu/Faculty/Contemplative_Studies_Initiative/rationale.html

In a recent issue of Ms. Magazine, Aimee Liu provides a moving account of living with an eating disorder. She concludes that women who suffer from the illness need to cultivate a sense of self in order to heal. Liu writes that “our bodies contain us. They carry us and work for us and give us pleasure. They speak for us when we dare not admit the truth. We owe it to ourselves to remember how to listen” (emphasis added).

After years of teaching Women’s Studies, I am convinced that Feminism offers for both women and men a powerful and empowering counter balance to misogyny. But I am also convinced that we cannot merely tell people to have a sense of self, or even empower them only intellectually and politically. If women have internalized the disembodiment that saturates U.S. culture, they often have no idea what it would feel like to become embodied. Women’s Studies (as well as other disciplines in Education) needs help students learn how to cultivate an engaged and integrated embodiment.

Yoga can provide such tools. With its emphasis on compassionate awareness, students can learn to pay attention to our bodies. Anusara® Yoga, in particular, offers some valuable ways to listen to one’s body. In an Anusara® class, students learn precise alignment principles as they move through poses. We learn how, in the words of John Friend, “to follow the breath and let her lead.” In doing so, we can cultivate an affirming and reflective way of inhabiting our bodies from the inside out, rather than the externally driven motivations that can prove unhealthy for both men and women. We can learn, then, how to better embody feminist principles.

Liu, Aimee. “The Perfect Pantomime.” Ms. 11:2 Spring 2009: 74-77. Print.