New Direction

I've moved my Feminist Yogini Blog. Come check it out on my new website: Beth Berila.  Exciting new work on yoga, feminism, and the body coming soon!

Curiosity without Assumptions

How often do we demonize the people we disagree with?  How often do we see a cut and dry, right and wrong, simplistic divide with little attempt to truly understand another’s position?

We don’t have to look much farther than the recent Republican debates to see how little deep understanding or compassion exists in our public conversations.

I have seen it time and time again in social justice work.  People on the Left—and on the Right—over simply the “other side.” As if there are only two sides.  As if the person with whom we disagree isn’t human but is, rather, some great evil. 

I’ve done it.  My early feminist commitments were so passionate I assumed that I had THE answer.

Boy, did age and life experience unsettle that arrogance and idealism.

I am still deeply committed to my feminist ideals.  But I am much more likely to want to understand where another person is coming from.  I prefer to presume that the other person is as deeply committed to his or her ideals for just as passionate—if different—reasons.

I am not suggesting there aren’t deep human atrocities, acts so horrible that we wonder how a human being could possibly commit them.  But in our everyday lives—in our neighborhoods, in our workplace, in our communities-- I prefer to believe there are human beings with deep and divided commitments.

The journalist and On Being host, Krista Tippett, gave a powerful TED talk that offers some thoughts about HOW to meet one another with compassion. “Reconnecting with Compassion,” explores a “linguistic resurrection” of the word compassion. Tippett tells of her Muslim conversation partners, Malka Haya Fenyvesi and Aziza Hasan, who strive for “curiosity without assumptions.”

                                            TED Prize@UN, Filmed November 2010

What a generous way to enter a difficult conversation: with openness, interest, and inquiry instead of anger, judgment, and righteousness. It’s the same way we approach our yoga practice.

Each time we come to our yoga mat, we have the opportunity to learn more about ourselves.  We may do Downward dog every day, but each one tells us something new about ourselves. When we let go of preconceived assumptions, we can open to what is, instead of what we think should be.  In that open curiosity, we can explore the nuance and subtlety of our body. We can feel into the crevices of our emotions.

Those moments on our yoga mat can carry over into life itself. Each time we come to what seems like an obstacle in life, we can open the possibility.  Rather than closing down out of fear, we have the chance to learn more about ourselves as a person. We can connect with our neighbors and colleagues on a human level—around our kids or our yoga or our interest in cooking.  When we do, we are more likely to stay in the game when we disagree.  We are more likely to hear a person out, to dialogue, and to listen rather than be righteous.

That is the form of feminism that my yoga has taught me to embody—one I live into each and every day.

When Did Self-Care Become Selfish?

One of my Women’s Studies students approached me this week, deeply upset.  She was agonizing over a decision she had made to cancel a meeting she was supposed to lead so that she could attend a significant professional opportunity. 

“Did I make the right decision?” she wondered.  “I know that this event (which only occurs once a year) will offer me important feminist and career networking opportunities,” she told me, “but….am I being selfish?”

How easily we women resort to guilt and self-blame if we take care of ourselves.  We are supposed to succeed, and, thanks to feminist movements, have many more opportunities to do so.  But still, we are somehow expected to put everyone else’s needs ahead of our own.

Or at least we think we are.

“Can the meeting you were supposed to lead be rescheduled?” I asked. “Is there enough time to accomplish what you need to accomplish even if the meeting is rescheduled?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I feel selfish. Am I making the right decision?”

The sense of duty and responsibility she feels toward her feminist commitments is admirable.  It’s what happens when we devote our lives to a cause larger than ourselves.  It is a kind of Karma Yoga that calls us to serve others. 

Judith Lasater poses the provocative question, “Is it possible…to serve without attachment to outcome, including how you should appear to others? How do you honor the spirit of karma yoga and also honor your own needs?”

This young woman offers a great deal of her energies to feminist organizing—so why was this one choice to prioritize her own professional advancement seen as an act of selfish individualism?

Her angst was familiar.  I often envy my colleagues who promote themselves with apparent ease.  I, too, have a hard time tooting my own horn or compromising my sense of feminist duty to work on my own advancement.

And until yoga, I had an even harder time letting go of responsibilities to take care of myself.

But, as Toni Cade Bambara told us, “if your house ain’t in order, you ain’t in order.”

Putting your house in order means many things, including knowing when to step back, recharge, rest, and regroup.

There is a reason that airplane recordings tell us to fasten our own oxygen masks before helping anyone else.  We cannot stay in the game of social change for the long haul if we don’t take care of ourselves.  And we cannot be sure to keep a grounded, clear, compassionate feminist vision of social change if we let ourselves get so burned out that our vision gets skewed and reactionary.

Yoga has taught me that it is, in fact, feminist to engage in healthy self-care.  When I carve out time for my yoga practice, when I have fun with friends, when I chill out, I can come back to my responsibilities with refreshed, rejuvenated, and, yes, grounded.   When I come to my mat on a regular basis, then I am much more likely to approach my feminist work with the compassion, balance, and equanimity that I want to bring to it. 

Giving to ourselves means we have more of ourselves to give.

My student will have made connections at that event that will let her continue to do her feminist social change work in the long run.  That is a good feminist choice.

“When you serve yourself, you make it possible to serve others. And when you serve others, you acknowledge your interdependence with all of life.”

                                    --Judith Lasater

Check out the reposting on Elephant Journal

Super GIRRRRRLLL.....

When I was little, I wanted to be Wonder Woman.  Lynda Carter rocked my world, and I even tried to make her snazzy red white and blue costume out of paper one year for Halloween. (It didn’t work).

How many of us, though, have learned that we have to be super woman to be good at our jobs at work and in life?  How many of us hold ourselves to impossibly high standards and feel that the only way to be truly good at what we do is to be invincible?  To, like Wonder Woman in her invisible jet, hide the messy work of our own, human journey?

I did, for years, as I tried to perform the perfectionism in my nature. In my classroom, I presented a knowing self, feeling insecure whenever I was challenged, but performing the invulnerability that I had been taught was expected.

But that only took me so far, and it kept both my teaching and my learning constrained.  It wasn’t until I learned that my true “super girl” lies in my vulnerability.  Yoga—and life--taught me that.

In my yoga classes, I feel accepted for my whole being, the flaws as well as the gifts.  Yoga gives me the gifts to work with what I consider to be my flaws in ways that turn them into gifts.  Just as my lower back pain means I can’t easily pop into a backbend, learning the proper tools helps me deepen my sensitivity.  I draw on the tools I have (taking my thighs back, widening my sitz bones, scooping my tailbone, broadening my lower back) until I can slowly, carefully, and gloriously, inch into a back bend.

I find the same is true with my fears, angers, and insecurities.  In my youth, when students questioned me, I used to search for the answer that made me seem like the “master” of the field. I operated on the assumption (one I had been taught) that I could only be qualified if I knew everything.  What a flawed model to teach our students and ourselves.

Thanks to yoga, I have lightened up a great deal. Now I often start with where I am vulnerable.  When I prepare to teach a yoga class, I look around my life for the areas where I struggle.  What keeps pushing my buttons this week? Where do I reach for mindfulness practices and find them stabilizing, or perhaps find them not enough?  I design my yoga classes from there. Inevitably, these are the classes when students come up to me afterwards and tell me they felt the class was directed toward them.  Somehow, in sharing my own authenticity, I had touched theirs.

I find myself using this skill in the academic classroom as well.  When we explore feminist theories, I illustrate for students where I grapple with the failures of some of the ones I hold most closely.  I try to model for them how to believe in something deeply and yet still question it and see its limitations. There isn’t an easy answer to the world’s toughest questions, and suggesting to our students that there is does them a disservice. When they raise questions that I don’t know how to answer, I work with them on how to sit compassionately with those unsolvable dilemmas.   Student feedback suggests that these are the classes that teach them lessons they will draw on for years to come, not merely content they will forget in a year.

Parker Palmer writes that we teach who we are, not merely what we know.  Once, last year, when a student was sharing with me a dilemma she was facing, I shared a time from my own past when I stumbled and got sidetracked from what I thought my feminist path was.  She looks puzzled, shocked, and then immensely relieved, as she exclaimed, “I thought you were always this cool.  I hadn’t imagined that you might have struggled like this too once.”

Once, I thought.  How about every day?  That day was another reinforcing message that our students need the life skills to weather hard negotiation. Mindfulness offers some tools along that path.  It is not just knowledge students need, but also emotional intelligence and compassionate, wise capacity.  Just as teachers teach who we are, students also learn who they are. 

Our job is to help them do that, so that, in the words of Parker Palmer, “As we learn more about who we are, we can learn techniques that reveal rather than conceal the personhood from which good teaching comes.”

                                                           

So maybe I am not Wonder Woman, with all those cool bullet- repellant bracelets. But I think I am teaching students that their "superbness" doesn't reside in their flawlessness but rather in their capacity to compassionately stay with the big questions.  

How do you bring your vulnerability into your teaching?

Do I Look Fat In This?

“My breasts aren’t big enough. My butt is too big. I don’t like my stomach. Do I look fat in this outfit?”

How many women have criticized ourselves like this at some point in our lives? Probably many of us, particularly if we live in Western societies. Here, cultural messages about women’s bodies and thinness saturate our media and “fat” is seen as a reflection of moral worth. Rather than seeing beauty in a range of body sizes and types—as yoga would have us do—women learn that only a narrow image counts.

Of course, it’s no surprise that women’s bodies are objectified in our popular culture. The most damaging part happens when we learn to objectify ourselves. Feminists such as Susan Bordo and Sandra Bartky have written about how women learn to police and regulate ourselves. We internalize those media messages so deeply that we place ourselves under surveillance and often find ourselves lacking. We learn, from a very young age, that we are valued more for our looks than anything else—a message that damages women’s self-esteem from a young age.

How often to we check our appearance when we walk by a mirror? Do we see ourselves as a holistic being, with talents and dreams? Or do we focus on body parts and scrutinize with a sharply critical eye?

Fragmenting and judging ourselves works to keep women down. It is sexism at work. Women become disembodied—judging our bodies as if from the inside out. We learn to see our bodies as something to hone, tone, berate, but not as a part of ourselves that needs to be listened to, befriended, and honored. 

That’s where yoga comes in. In yoga, we can learn to reclaim our bodies. We cultivate the connection between our movement and our breath. We bring our attention to our present experience and learn to accept to without judgment.

 We come home to our bodies.

On our mats, we learn how to integrate our heart, mind, spirit, and body. We learn to work with our physical limitations—which we can eventually see not as limitations but as the unique gifts of who are.

 In yoga, we learn to value our bodies for what they do for us and what they have to teach us. When those old voices of self-critique arise, we can more easily notice them, put them into perspective, and refuse to feed them. Instead, we can learn to surround ourselves with love, compassion, and acceptance. We greet ourselves, in the words of the great poet Rumi, like a valued guest.

We become re-embodied.

Hi, folks. I have decided to take a hiatus from writing this blog for a while so that I can immerse myself in my yoga practice and in larger scale writing projects, including some that link feminism and yoga. Thank you for following my blog; I truly appreciate it. But in the interest of balance, I am going to let it go for a while.

Wishing you all a balanced and joyful summer. Be well,
Beth

Recharging with Todd Norian Workshops

I am spending the weekend in therapeutic intensive workshops with Todd Norian, an insightful Anusara teacher who is visiting my home town of St. Paul, Minnesota. He came in the nick of time, when I was in greater need of revitalization than I had realized. As I sit in the workshops, I am drinking up the inspiration and information like a woman who forgot to bring her water bottle on a long hike. It feels deeply nourishing.

Of course, I recharge on my yoga mat each time I practice, and with my friends each time I reconnect with them. But it has been a hectic semester crunch, when more and more tasks are thrown on my plate, more budget cuts threaten the Women’s Studies Program in which I teach, and stress and anxiety permeate many of the students and faculty with whom I work. I feel like I have been able to remain level but not soar, stay steady but not access the deep joy that allows me to open and thrive.

So participating in twelve hours of intensive Anusara workshops this weekend is more invigorating than the breath of spring that is beginning to infuse the Minnesota air. I drink in Todd’s energy and humor, supported in the laughter and warmth of the other participants. I refill the wellspring of knowledge, learning how to help people with knee, shoulder, or hip injuries. As my knowledge deepens, so does my joy.

Though it may seem, to some, like work to allocate my weekend to workshops, the time is spent reconnecting to the energy that allows me to center and thrive. It doesn’t just quench my thirst, it nourishes me and surrounds me with the intrinsic goodness that clarifies how I want to be in the world. As Todd reminded us, the Tantric philosophy of Anusara reminds us that joy is our birthright, and that “life is not a problem to be solved but rather an experience to be savored.”

Will Somebody Please Hand Me My Feet?

One of my students blurted this out as we went into bow pose. Her inadvertent exclamation had the rest of the class rolling in laughter. We could commiserate with the way that certain yoga poses seem out of our reach when we are first introduced to them. But with both practice and proper alignment technique, many of the poses are much more doable than we might think.

Of course, the laughter is what really opens our hearts to possibility. When we dedicate ourselves to our practice and our values but don’t take ourselves or life too seriously, we are often able to delve into our potential. We can take more risks, accept the results without judgment, and embrace the supportive atmosphere as other join in.

Anusara Yoga starts with the premise of internal goodness in each and every one of us. That belief creates a gentleness and warmth that can support us when our patterns or our limitations arise. Such aspects of ourselves and others are not “flaws,” but are rather part of the divine nature of being human. When can learn to laugh as we grope around for our feet in bow pose, we will often find that our heart blossoms when we lift our legs, feet, and heart up to extend into the pose.

A Feminist Yogini?

As I was teaching my yoga class this week, I realized a seeming paradox in two key realms of my life: my Women’s Studies and my yoga worlds. In the latter, I teach about being non-judgementally present with what is. But how does that sit with feminist activist efforts to produce social transformation?

Dukkha, or suffering, yogic philosophy teaches us, comes from not accepting reality as it is. The human tendency is to either try to force things to be as we want them to be (craving or clinging) or to try to avoid things we do not like (aversion). On our mats, we have the opportunity to cultivate a witness to how things are. We can learn to accept reality as it is, without judgement, and notice our patterns.

But as a feminist, I am not accustomed to accepting things as they are. When social inequality exists, my tendency is to want to change it. And yet, even in feminism, an accurate view of the present reality is an important first step. We have to understand how oppression works, and who suffers from it, in order to figure out how to change it. We also have to understand how larger structural patterns operate in order to determine effective strategies for change.

Similarly, yoga does not teach us to mindlessly accept a reality that isn’t good for us. We first have to cut through our delusions to see clearly. Then, we can make more life affirming choices about our actions.

Perhaps they are not so different after all.

But How Will We Look?!

Our yoga mats can be the place where we reclaim the authenticity of our internal experiences and resist the influence of negative outer perceptions. I think of this idea every time I give my yoga students instructions to feel their way into Downward Dog. “Bend your knees,” I suggest, “and stick your sitz bones way up in the air. Get a really long spinal stretch. Then from the back of your thighs, straighten your legs, keeping that delicious length in your spine.”

Every time I say this, I find myself noticing how odd it is to tell a group of mostly women to stick their buts in the air. It’s a bit counterintuitive to ask women to stick out our sitz bones, when we are taught to be so self-conscious and worried about whether we have the perfect body.

And yet, letting go of self-consciousness on our mats paves the way for doing so off our mats. Once we give ourselves over to our own practice, we can become much more concerned with what we are feeling than what others are thinking. How incredibly freeing.

Befriending Our Edge

Our yoga mat is the perfect place to explore the full potential—and the limitations--of our capacity. Our edge is that place that allows us to learn: if we hang out too far in front of our edge, we don’t grow to our full capacity. If we go too far past our edge, however, we risk injuring ourselves and others. Let’s face it, it’s just not sustainable to constantly spread ourselves too thin.

What a delicate dance to find that line, especially when it’s always shifting. Our edge looks different when we are twenty then it does when we are forty, different when we are comfortable in a familiar job than it does when we’ve just started a new one. Our yoga practice, as I’ve noted elsewhere in my blog, is a perfect place to learn our edge.

But the deeper we embrace the dance, the more we discover about our edge. It’s like a good novel, replete with layers of nuance. See, it’s not just knowing our edge in the moment of practice (like when we are in Natarajasana and choose not to extend our leg any further), it’s also seeing the big picture, like whether our muscles will be screaming the next day. For instance, in my own life, I honored my edge very well last semester when I came up with lots of interesting ideas, but I am finding my edge sorely tested this semester as all my great ideas come to fruition and I have to carry them out.

Befriending our edge, then, also involves choosing how we will meet the challenges on our plate. I may not have much choice about whether I will honor my commitments, but I can choose how I will do so. In these tough economic times, people may not be able to choose how many jobs they need to hold to make ends meet (if they are lucky enough to have jobs) or whether to assume the responsibility for caring for an elderly parent. But we can choose how we treat ourselves and others as we navigate those responsibilities.

I am learning that coming back to my foundation—both on my mat and off—is what allows me to engage the dance with grace and beauty. When I practice clear alignment principles, I know that however deep I go in a pose, I can do so in a healthy way. We can cultivate the same solid foundations in our lives off our mats.

A Case of Cold Feet

OK. So I know this is a silly question, but….Has anyone else gotten really nervous before teaching yoga in their first couple years? You know, the type of nerves that make you queasy and wonder what you were thinking when you decided to become a yoga teacher? Never mind that you completed the necessary certification and have gotten positive feedback. Still, the case of nerves can be unsettling!

As a teacher by trade, I know that such nerves are a natural and inevitable part of the process. The first couple years I spent as a Women’s Studies Professor were full of anxiety, second-guessing myself, and stage fright. Over the years, I have come to see that no matter how prepared one is in one’s field, part of the process of being a novice teacher is learning from the daily experiences in the classroom. There’s a confidence and knowledge that can only come from that hands-on experience. And, of course, a certain degree of nervousness often makes us better at what we do.

But I had an epiphany on my yoga mat the other day, (a place that is increasingly becoming the site of profound realizations). I discovered that when I started to second-guess myself in the academic classroom, I would just overcompensate with more preparation. I relied on my intellect to shore up the armor around my nerves, to give me the illusion of confidence that everything was OK. That was a safe route, since institutions of higher learning reward the overemphasis on the intellect.

But the Buddhist writer Pema Chödrön teaches that underneath most emotions, such as anger, fear, or anxiety, lies a deep tenderness that we often strive to avoid by reacting in habitual ways. Teaching yoga has taught me that it’s the raw softness underneath the nerves that offer the deepest growth possibilities. Intellect as armor only avoids that more fundamental learning. Though I can and will continue to study to prepare for class, the real gift comes from meeting my own self with the same compassion and patience with which I meet the students in my yoga classes. I have found that when I open to the vulnerability underneath the nerves, I can be a much wiser teacher, for myself and others.

Soaring Through Inner Sensitivity

Yoga Moment! I balanced for 7 whole seconds in Sirasana (headstand)! Whoohoo!
It was like flying. For months now I have been doing that dance with many inversions: one foot off the wall, then the other, then quickly falling back to the security of the wall if I started to waver.

Today, though, all my yoga principles seemed to converge in full alignment. I engaged Muscular Energy by pressing into the ground and hugging the midline. I activated skull loop to keep my head safe and give me more balance. I scooped my tailbone and puffed my kidneys to keep from arching my back. And I pressed up through my feet, activating inner spiral.

The balanced action that resulted was freeing. I could feel myself anchoring down to the stability of the earth even as I activated Organic Energy to extend toward the sky.

It enabled the exquisite poetry of being fully in the present moment. I can’t balance on automatic pilot. I have to turn inward and attune to all the subtle messages of my body. When I started to fall forward, taking my hips back helped me stay up. When I started to waver backward, pressing both downward and upward simultaneously helped center me again.

My yoga teacher said the other day that an intermediate class is not distinguished so much by the physical poses or capability, but by the sensitivity. For me, the soaring sensation of balancing came from the deeper layer of inner attunement that allowed it.

Walking the Talk

As we approach the new year, indeed, the new decade, many people talk of setting new year’s resolutions. Such resolutions are virtual obsessions in the U.S. and often carry built-in failure. Most people resolve to lose weight, to make more money, or to achieve that promotion—all potentially useful goals, but all focused more on the end result than on the journey. If we do slip up or fail to achieve our goal, we often feel worse about ourselves than we did to begin with.

Instead of focusing on achieving that end result, over which we may or may not have control, we might instead commit ourselves to how we want to be in the world. In feminist terms, we would call this “walking the talk,” or putting our beliefs, politics, and values into practice.

Buddhist philosophy reminds us that attachment is one of the key sources of suffering. The writer Rachel Naomi Remen makes a powerful distinction between attachment and commitment, one of which tends to be much more life-affirming than the other. She writes,

“While attachment has its source in the personality, in what the Buddhists refer to as the ‘desire nature,’ commitment comes from the soul. In relationship to life, just as in human relationships, attachment closes down options, commitment opens them up….Attachment leads farther and farther into entrapment. Commitment, though it may sometimes feel constricting, will ultimately lead to greater degrees of freedom. Both involve in the moment an experience of holding, sometimes against the flow of events or against temptation. One can distinguish the two in most situations by noticing over time whether one has moved through this activity closer to freedom or closer to bondage. Attachment is a reflex, an automatic response which often may not reflect our deepest good. Commitment is a conscious choice, to align ourselves with our most genuine values and our sense of purpose.”

Commitment, then, is about grounding ourselves in our deepest values and infusing our actions with that clarity. It is more about how we meet life’s challenges than it is about the end result. Paradoxically, because we are less attached to things being any particularly way, we often achieve our goal anyway, but with less suffering along the way. Regardless, we can view the journey as a path of deep internal joy and growth.

I remember the first time I heard my yoga teacher invite the class to “let go of that which doesn’t serve you.” I felt a wave of relief and even freedom wash over me with the realization that I can choose what I cling to and how I want to move through the world.

As we move into the New Year, I invite all of us to return to the clarity of what’s truly important to us. May our deepest commitments infuse our world with beauty and light.

The Gift of Vulnerability

A former student of mine recently wrote to me about an abusive relationship she found herself in after graduation. She described the familiar cycle of isolation, emotional manipulation, and physical abuse that resulted in a loss of self. I remember this student as sassy, intelligent, outgoing, and funny. So it broke my heart to hear of the pain she endured.

It is a familiarly painful story that I hear from many women. The loss of self she describes echoes my own story of addiction, which served as a self-destructive “coping mechanism” for a period of my past. In my case, it was a way to silence the self-denigrating voice of judgment that had grown too powerful. In her case, the abusive partner’s version of reality distorted her own.

Though our experiences were different, this former student and I had some commonalities. We were both passionate about feminism, social justice, and women’s empowerment. We both had a solid network of friends. We both had voices of wisdom deep inside us warning us the situations we were in were dangerous for our well-being. And yet, the destructive situations snuck up on us and took their toll nevertheless.

However, those deeper seeds of wisdom and self-honoring eventually prevailed, helping us pull out of the situations and getting us back on our feet (with the help of loved ones, of course). She tells me that it was her feminism and what she learned in her Women’s Studies courses that gave her the strength to leave and rebuild her sense of self. For me, it was this same grounding combined with the self-honoring lessons of yoga.

In yoga, we recognize that those experiences that are the most painful for us are also often the ones that provide the deepest and most profound life lessons. As we are pulled into the darkest depths of the painful situations, we discover our inner strength, capacity, and insight. These experiences are not our “flaws” or “failures,” but rather the textures that allow for the deepest growth. When we emerge on the other side of it, we can reclaim our lives with a joy and peace that we could not have imagined. The legacy of our own pain can help us become more compassionate for ourselves and others.

For me, the combination of yoga and feminism provided the tools to foster a self-honoring voice of wisdom. My former student is still finding her own path and discovering the tools that will work for her. But for both of us, we discovered that life will, at times, take us under. When that happens, rather than sinking, we have the opportunity to delve into the rich vulnerabilities of our own hearts. The gifts we find may surprise us.

Body Wisdom

Yoga continually reminds me how to listen to the insights within my own body. This past weekend, I participated in twelve fabulous hours of workshops led by Martin and Jordan Kirk of http://kirkyoga.com, two Anusara teachers who hold a permanent spot in my heart. At one point, I overshot my edge in the very last handstand technique. Instead of opting to work with a spotter, I went for it and ended up falling.

Interestingly, had I remained calm in that moment of uncertainty before I found my balance, I could have used the principles of alignment to protect myself and remain upright. Instead, fear overtook me and I crumpled to the ground, bruising my shoulder in the process.

The soreness in my shoulder the next morning made me worried that I might not be able to finish the weekend workshops. But Martin and Jordan are renowned for their yoga therapeutic expertise. They showed me how to use Anusara principles of alignment to not only protect but also to help heal my shoulder.

Over the next two days, the level of wisdom that emerged from my own body astounded me. Each time I unwittingly let my side body collapse or failed to keep my shoulder blades back, my body reminded me with pain. But when I practiced the principles, I was not only painless, I felt much more freedom in that wounded area. The pain, instead of being a showstopper, actually helped me more fully embody life-affirming movement.

We often consider learning to be an external process. Women in particular are often taught to perceive our bodies through external lenses and criteria. But when we turn inward, our body can share its own power of knowing. Yoga is about learning how to listen.

The Sheepish Yogini

Hello, friends. My apologies for the delay in my regular posts. After working with John Friend in his workshops in Park City a couple weekends ago (fabulous!), and getting over a cold right before, I have been playing catch up at work. That may happen from time to time during the semester, but I will try to be as regular with my posts as I can.

I hope to get back to my schedule this weekend. In the meantime, here's an insightful quote from yoga teacher Shiva Rea to ponder:

"The yogini is a woman whose body has become her temple, her source of discovery and renewal, the place of remembering her life force."

Talking the Talk

Feminism has long noted that our language helps construct our reality. Far from being mere exercises in “political correctness,” feminists note that the language we use shapes our understandings of social issues and our relationships with one another.

Anusara yoga has taken this awareness to a new level. Anusara teachers infuse our speech with life-affirming attitudes. We recognize that language matters; the storylines we tell ourselves influence our understanding of the world. As yoga practitioners and teachers, we can take the opportunity to create more empowering storylines.

What does this sound like? Instead of squeezing or tightening our legs together in handstand, we hug in toward the midline. Instead of stretching our torso in a forced way, we imagine inner body bright, which creates fullness while maintaining a soft opening. We receive a deeper breath. We allow our experience to be what it is. And we shine forth our full potential in each pose. The difference in wording crafts a more loving and empowering tone both on and off the mat.

With its base in Tantric philosophy, Anusara takes this positive angle even further to infuse yoga practice with metaphor. Anusara teachers learn how to paint descriptive pictures for our students. We radiate our energy outward on exhales and draw in on inhales like an ocean tide. We float our leg up in Warrior I, allowing the waves of energy to ripple through us. As we transition from Warrior I back to Downward Dog, we recognize that when we flow with our breath, we can harness surprising strength.

Mere semantics? I don’t think so. In a media-infused culture that trains women to view ourselves with a critical, objectifying, and fragmenting gaze, it can be transgressive to speak to ourselves and others with language that reflects our value systems and our principles. Over time, we can sculpt a more compassionate and empowering reality with life-affirming language, much like ocean waves carve softer shapes out of hardened rocks. The rhythm of time and practice enables ripples of powerful change.

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.