As I grow into my role as a yoga teacher I think a lot about how I can create a truly safe space for men and women to explore yoga. In particular I think about how powerful the messages of body-shame are in our culture, and how this affects the process of teaching yoga here in the West.
I want to tell you a story to explain what I mean.
A while ago I went to a yoga workshop with a visiting international yoga teacher. He’s pretty famous and several of my yogi friends had recommended him. Obviously, I wanted to learn all I could from him so, although he taught in a style that I don’t practice regularly, I went along.
It went well until he decided to direct his attention at me.
He approached my mat as I worked gently to ease my body into a complex twisting forward bend, one that demanded a little more openness in the hips than was available to me at six in the morning.
“Why is your knee there?” he asked. “Why don’t you lower the knee?”
“It doesn’t seem to want to lower this morning,” I replied, not too disconcerted. I’d been in many classes before when my knee wasn’t ready to lower and teachers had generally left it at that.
But not this guy. He sat down beside me and shook my knee with his hand.
“Tight.” he declared. “You are very tight.”
It was clear that tight was not what my hip was supposed to be. He slapped at my knee a few times in what appeared to be an attempt to convince my hip to suddenly release and the knee to lower. The slapping didn’t produce the results he was hoping for.
Instead, I felt a surge of heat in my face. My heart began to beat faster and I suddenly realised that I was about to burst into tears. I started breathing even more deeply and closed my eyes in an effort to stave off the tears. The closed eyes and deep breathing must have looked like a profound yogic moment to him because he said:
“Yes, yes. Very good. Keep breathing and this tightness will go away.”
Much to my relief, he then went away.
Then the tears came. They surprised me. I’ve experienced tears in yoga. Tears sometimes come as I breathe my way into a deeper opening in a pose and, in doing so, let go of emotional baggage I’ve been carrying in my body. I’ve come to recognise and even welcome those tears.
These were not those tears. These were tears, I see in retrospect, of shame.
Like so many women, like so many people, I have been raised in a culture that is rife with messages of shame about my body.
Our bodies, we are told, are too hairy, too lumpy, too noisy, too big, too scarred, too heavy and too smelly.
Then you begin to practice yoga and, for one thing, you begin to appreciate your body for what it can do. It can hold you in a balancing pose. It can carry you through a flowing sequence of standing poses. Your arms grow stronger and that matters more than whether or not they look good in an evening gown, especially since you never wear and evening gown. Your legs grow strong and that matters more than whether or not they look like they did when you were twenty.
But shame can be insidious. As I began to shed some of my shameful feelings about my body, I accumulated new ones.
Those damn hips that simply wouldn’t release into the deceptively named ‘easy cross-legged pose’ became a source of shame for me.
Over time, I found yoga teachers who led me past that shame into an even deeper experience of true body love. Those same teachers told me that my readiness to teach yoga depended not on the openness of my hips but on the openness of my heart and on my own personal commitment to my yoga practice.
But the traces of those decades of body shame remain.
When a well-meaning and, I’m sure, quite compassionate man slapped at my knee and deemed my body to be “too tight”, my own private body shames were triggered.
As a yoga teacher I’m aware that yoga can all too easily become simply another place in which to beat ourselves up about the inadequacies of our bodies. My commitment is to be mindful of this, and teach in a way that reinforces positive experiences of and messages about our bodies. My goal is to teach without body shame.
That’s why I am SO excited to be combining forces with Anna to offer this new online course 30 Days of Curvy Yoga – a course for anyone (curvy or not) who has ever felt that their body wasn’t good enough for yoga. Join us and discover that yoga will meet you AND your body exactly where you are, and that nothing about you needs to be fixed or changed. Join us for shame-free yoga, yoga for your body.
Namaste,
Marianne
p.s. Want to learn more about 30 Days of Curvy Yoga? Join us on a free, live call tonight at 7:00pm EST by clicking here and signing up. If you can’t make it live but would like to hear the info, go ahead and sign up and we’ll send you a recording afterwards. Registration closes for the course this Thursday, July 14!
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Marianne is a writer, human rights advocate and yoga teacher. Creator of the 30 Days of Yoga course. A Huffington Post contributor and practicing Buddhist (it takes plenty of practice). Conscious change is her calling. Clarity and compassion are her calling cards. She’s at her most chatty on Twitter. Please say hi!
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I absolutely feel we should practice from where we are today and that no one should be made to feel inadequate or shamed. I wanted to bring up an important concept in yoga philosophy called “Tapas”. Tapas is the burning away of non-essential unhealthy patterns in the mind and in the body. Not by slapping knees or labeling tightness do we face our demons, but through the practice itself. The teacher uses the practice as a mirror for the students and puts them on the path to enlightenment and health.
I think that we have to be careful that we don’t send a message that yoga is never going to be uncomfortable. It is the uncomfortable situations in life that inspire us to change and send signals that there are some patterns in our life that are not serving us. When we do yoga and come up against these in a loving environment, our lives are made better.
The steady and comfortable seat, that Patanjali talks about in the Yoga Sutras, is something that comes after a steady consistent practice. It comes after facing things head on and I think students should know that.
Great point, Shanna! I think that area of challenge vs. shame is so gray for many of us (or at least it was for me for a long time–and still is some days!). I love your idea of challenging (which will look different for each of us–also a great distinction) without shame. I always find the yogic concept of sthira/sukha, or a balance of effort and ease, to be helpful with this.
Brene Brown has some wonderful research about shame and how it is often difficult to identify until we start doing some digging in our own lives to know when/how we feel it in our bodies. When we can work with that information, we can even more easily tell the difference between challenge and shame. I recommend her books The Gifts of Imperfection and I Thought it Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Telling the Truth about Perfectionism, Inadequacy and Power.
This is a fantastic post. I especially like your thoughts on appreciating your body for what it can do in yoga. I remember a huge workshop where about 6 people tried to get me into wheel (which is now in my practice, but was out of reach at that time). I would have loved to hang out in bridge or maybe restorative bridge, but they insisted on lifting me up. The fact that several people had to help made me feel absolutely terrible and incredibly heavy. What I took from that is that when I become a teacher, I hope to remember to always encourage people to do what’s right for them and their bodies. If someone would like an assist or some help in a pose, that should be their choice.
Thanks for sharing this, Samantha! I completely agree: an assist should be just that—an actual assistance (which to me implies a desire for help).
I’m quickly learning that I learn and grow best in a positive, accepting environment, and forcing just isn’t the way for me to do things. And that certainly applies to yoga, too. Yup.
Right there with ya, my friend. I can’t even tell you how many areas of my life I have learned and am learning this. Guess it’s one of my life lessons!
what an exceptionally clear compassionate portrayal of the topic of shame in our bodies, thank you
minor things i liked (relative to the article), were the inclusion of us guys
“a truly safe space for men and women to explore yoga” , and the references to being too hairy
i remember when i was 14 wrapping a large beach towel around me to hide my early teen hairyness, and ending up looking like i was walking around naked at the local pig stand drive-in
the major thing that appealed to me was the careful development of the concept of accepting ourselves, where we are, as we are, ie, as per above in your article, “yoga will meet you AND your body exactly where you are, and that nothing about you needs to be fixed or changed”
our very basic gentle yoga class this morning, kept returning to that theme, including for myself, noticing my hairy legs against my mat
while still retaining the sense of recognizing what each of us chooses to change, as per shanna in the comments above
i hope to get this aticle to some of my class members who don’t have internet
thanks so much, best wishes
adan
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Adan! I also loved Marianne’s inclusiveness with her post. It’s so important for all of us.
Ok I’ve registered for the class on Saturday. Sounds very interesting and I’ve been wanting to try yoga – kinda nervous though be gentle with me!
Wonderful, Jeanne! I’m looking forward to meeting you! We always have beginners in class, so you won’t be the only one. Feel free to email me if you have specific questions: anna@curvyyoga.com
Well written.
I *felt* your post.
Nothing enlightened (a.k.a. kind) came to mind about the yoga teacher that made you cry…only this word:
“BASTARD!”
I loved this post. I have had those same experiences all throughout my years of practice. I especially connect with it as an new instructor and a curvy yogi. That shame monster can really sneak up on you if you aren’t careful.
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