Election Results

No, not this year’s. I am many things: psychic is not one of them.

The first presidential election in which I was old enough to vote was in 2000. Being away at college (and having voted in a municipal election the year before), I voted early and absentee. Also being away at college — and a newly declared political science minor — we made a social event out of watching the election results roll in. (It was an honors dorm. We geeked out like that.)

Of course, we didn’t have any idea how long we’d actually be awake that year — and I gave up and went to bed shortly after 2am — but we made an evening of it. Several of us popped popcorn, a few either worked on or pretended to work on homework, and we all sat around in our dorm’s rec room to watch the results roll in.

We weren’t exactly a politically monolithic bunch. Some had grown up in the region of the university and subscribed — in different increments, depending on the individual — to the conservative political leanings of the area. Some had grown up farther away, in more liberal parts of the state. And I’m sure there were some like me, who’d grown up hearing one predominant political ideology but who were now using the freedom of being “away” at college to vehemently question everything. Moreover, I’m sure there were some who were like me in another way — who were prone to seeing the world in the same oversimplified terms I’d developed as a teenager, who hadn’t yet matured to realize that, well, reality is a lot more complicated than that.

There were a lot of tense moments that evening. We weren’t all rooting for the same candidates (since we were watching a variety of legislative races around the state in addition to the electoral college results), and we weren’t shy about saying why. People were angered; feelings were hurt. I’m sure I was on the giving and receiving end of each.

And yet — These were the people we counted on to let us do laundry ahead of them when we were on our last pair of clean underwear, to share notes with us when we skipped calculus, to help us sort out which campus regulations could be disregarded safely and which were actual big deals, to share food with us when we missed dining hall hours or our meal plans had run out. We lived with each other, day in and day out.

While emotions and words got plenty heated, personal insults were something we didn’t do. I’m going to go so far as to say that the idea didn’t enter my mind, though I can’t claim to know what was in the minds of other people. Because it doesn’t make sense to write someone off as stupid, callous, or disgusting when I’m sitting in the same room with them — when I see them almost every day face to face — so I know full well that they are none of these things — though I may still use those same descriptors for individual opinions they hold.

This year, however, I’ve found myself wanting to tune out more, wanting to write more people off. Which is not overall a positive trait, and I own that. Since a lot more of my political interactions now take place over the Internet, when discussions do get uncomfortable and heated, it’s a lot easier for me just to click the tab closed and walk away. Which, if that’s what I need to do in any given moment as a part of self care, then that is what I need to do, and I don’t apologize for it.

But when that starts to become a pattern… well, no one ever learned to wrestle with new ideas from a pattern of avoidance.

On the other hand, as pretty much everyone on the Internet knows by now, not everyone should be engaged with. I write a pretty low key blog here, and I don’t run around starting flame wars elsewhere, either online or in real life. I’ve still managed to receive a certain amount of personal attacks and insults. In person, it’s usually someone saying as much about a group they don’t know I belong to — e.g., “fucking queers,” “damn women who can’t keep their legs closed,” or “people like that are a drain on our health care system.” Here — online — where people know full well they’re directing said insult to me personally, I choose not to publish the vast majority of them because I do systemically choose not to engage.

And I don’t think that’s wrong, either.

I’m sure that different people will have different “lines in the sand” about this — and even people who have lines that are similar to mine will word things differently. But if I’m going to put myself on the line, to engage with difficult ideas and conflicting values, I have to know that it’s coming from a place of overall respect, that the person with whom I agree still views me as a whole person, an equal. But when other people predicate such engagement on the idea ad hominem attacks — against me personally or against people like me — that devalues me as a person and us as a group. That’s not the place to create understanding, either.

All of this only works if the majority of people play fair.

Can’t Have Everything

I’ve been thinking I’ve been angry at the Internet a lot in the past few days. I mean, there’s the standard “inadvertently glancing at comments on a mainstream media news post” and “dealing with hateful troll comments” types of angry. On their own, I can brush them off pretty easily, but piled on top of others, they’re still part of the baseline. Then there are the hit-or-miss blogs I read occasionally; in the past few days, they’ve been more miss than hit.

But I’ve been most angered by comments in places I’d previously regarded as safe spaces for particular types of conversations and issues.

As it happens, I am wrong — both about those being safe spaces and about me being angry.

Really, I realized during an hour of stepping the fuck away and reminding myself of what yoga feels like, I am hurt.

Previously, I’d considered these spaces to be ones where I could let my guard down regarding things like fat, disability, and body image. For a considerable length of time, especially in Internet terms, that worked well for me. Now, though, it seems that some of those spaces have become more focused on being more educational, discussion-oriented spaces for a wider variety of readers and commenters.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that these are now bad spaces or that we don’t need spaces that focus on 101-type social justice education. However, I think it’s not always possible to be a space that’s both open to folks who’d like that 101-type explanation to their questions or reservations and that’s supportive of folks who are literally frustrated to screams and tears by the repetitive and potentially insensitive nature of those questions. Can’t always have it both ways.

Which is why I can no longer visit those spaces in the same way — because they are no longer safe spaces for me. In short, when people ask clueless questions or make misinformed comments — even when they do so innocently, respectfully — it hurts unless I put up conscious emotional defenses against it (sometimes even then). Those defenses are stressful, anxiety-inducing. I need places to go where I can be without them sometimes.

Maybe sometimes, I will still visit when I have sufficient psychological reserves. But they can’t be the places I go after a long day at work and in the world, where I’ve been busy being strong for everyone else. They can’t be the notifications the pop up in inboxes and dashboards the ones I might open for sake of the title when I’m really not prepared for what’s inside.

They now join the long list of places I can read when I’m ready to give back even more. The list of spaces I can go to find peace and to restore? That one continues to shorten.

30 Books I’m Glad I Read Before Age 30: Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

Also I found the blog post that inspired me to write my own list. Amazing what Googling a title in the clear thinking of coffee will do.

Anyway, on to the books.

7) The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf — Unlike some of the other books on this list, The Beauty Myth did not inspire me to further love and following of Wolf’s writing. Still, it was the first time I’d stopped to consider just how very many resources are tied up in convincing us to prioritize pretty over all else.

8) The Baby-Sitters Club #1: Kristi’s Great Idea by Ann M. Martin — Laugh if you must. There was a summer with a baby-sitter where I was almost too old for baby-sitters, certainly thought I was too old for baby-sitters and all these other little kids, but in reality was not actually old enough to stay home alone. My sitter’s daughter allowed me access to her shelf of BSC books when it became apparent that the book-a-day I brought for myself was not going to be sufficient.

9) The Bible in a combination of King James Version and New International Version — No, not all of it all of it, but most, over a period of years. It’s much difficult for someone to defend bigotry with, “But Jesus said…” if I can counter with, “No, He didn’t. Show me.”

10) Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott — I read this book when I was trying to figure out how to go from writing as a very private thing I did, where I never showed anyone, to writing as a more public act, where I actually wanted people to read. But of course I was terrified that they’d laugh and I’d discover that I’d been “doing it wrong” the whole time. And I read Bird by Bird precisely when I needed the permission that the “Shitty First Drafts” chapter had to give. I’m not going to sit here and say that if I’d never read it, I wouldn’t be writing today. But it was sympathy for how difficult, intellectually and emotionally, writing can be — and encouragement to just write anyway.

11) Lies My teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen — (Except I’ve only read the original 1995 edition.) The first edition came out when I was going through my phase of, “I am right; all these grown ups are wrong. Therefore I will pretend to listen, but really they can’t teach me anything.” It was nice to have a book that validated that, even in part and even if for different reasons. Additionally, as it turns out, some — okay, a metric fuckton — of my parochial school education came with a hefty dose of bias. Lies My Teacher Told Me helps me remember that I want to be as complete and impartial with my students as I can. I don’t promise that my remarks are never biased, but I do my best to teach them how to think — how to find information, how to evaluate information and viewpoints, how to synthesize information to draw the best conclusions they can — and not what to think.

Easy & Ego

When I read the title “Easy Beginner Practice,” I thought this YouTube video would be, well, easy — easy enough that I tried it after I’d already gone through a 30-minute vinyasa practice of my own.

That was not the smartest thing I have ever done.

[Video from HolmTV via YouTube.]

Since it was advertised as a “Yoga 101,” I was expecting a slower, gentler flow with a lot of alignment instruction. This was not that.

The practice is easy in the sense that the majority of it consists of the same basic sun salute, repeated multiple times. Even if it’s confusing toward the beginning, there’s enough practice to build both cognitive and muscle memory for what to do here. Additionally, the majority of the add-ons contain “nothing fancy” — that is, do include poses that are relatively common in most yoga classes in the U.S. and Canada (perhaps beyond, but that is outside my frame of reference). I might not recommend it for someone who’s completely new to any type of yoga, but it may well be a good practice for folks who have some familiarity with common asanas but who are new to a vinyasa style of practice.

That said, it’s worth noting that the speed of the practice is not slow. And there were enough repetitions — and holds — of utkatasana to make me say out loud, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”** So while it wasn’t a particularly complicated practice, it was one that assumed a certain level of strength, stamina, and mobility.

Similarly, while I could enter all of the poses in this practice, it was not easy for me. Part of that has to do with when I tried it, yes, and part of it might have to do with someone else’s titling and the subjective nature of what is “easy.” But more of that — maybe a little more, maybe a lot — has to do with my perceptions of my own yoga “level,” my assumptions about what constitutes a “beginner” or “easy” practice, and my own ego. Essentially, some part of this practice was jarring to me because I had thought it was going to be easier, and I felt discombobulated and uncomfortable when it wasn’t. That was unexpected. For a little while, at least, I was unsure of how to cope and felt shamed because I felt so ungrounded.

I got over it, but every once in a while, getting my ass handed to me is a good thing.

** To which Yellow Dog cocked his head to the side and was like, “What? We are not fucking kidding you anything. I are confused.” Gray Dog — who has known me since Forever, in her terms — stared straight at me and was like, “Yes, we are fucking kidding you. But you HOLD THAT CHAIR POSE while I lie on the couch and chew this tasty bone.”

Saying Goodbye to Skinny Jeans

When I was younger, I would occasionally watch my mom clear out her closet. Some of the clothes were ones I’d never seen before and that clearly dated from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s (before I was born). Some, on the other hand, were clothes I remembered her wearing, though not for a while.

“Mom,” I asked once, “why don’t you wear that anymore?”

“Because it doesn’t fit me anymore,” she replied.

I was young enough that I only associated “doesn’t fit me anymore” with the process of becoming a “big girl,” which to me meant growing up and was very much welcomed as a good thing. Later, however, I realized that becoming too big for clothing was sometimes seen as a negative. I started to notice the wistful tone in her voice when she said, “I can’t wear this anymore.”

Later still, I started to hear the advice.

“These are only one size too small, so I should keep them for when I fit into them again.”

“I wore these a year or so ago, so keeping them isn’t a far away goal.”

Eventually, “You should always keep a pair of skinny jeans in your closet, to remind you of the size you used to be because that’s the size you could become again.”

I was cleaning out my closet this new year, and I thought about my mom’s words. Keeping a pair of closet pants doesn’t strike me as all bad. For instance, they would serve to remind me:

• Of a time when I was less strong than I am now.
• Of a time when I conflated weight with health.
• Of a time when I set a great store by being a societally acceptable size.
• Of a time when I needed to master the fine art of saying, “Fuck you very much.”

With respect to the last point, at least, its time has come. I cleaned out my closet and found zero clothing that was one size too small. However, I found articles of clothes that were three, four, and five sizes too small.

When I looked at them, one part of me wanted to keep them. Not because I entertained delusions of fitting into those same jeans but because I associated those jeans with some awesome memories.

The jeans I bought when I’d been out of my previous abusive relationship for ten months? Wonderful.

Jeans I found that worked with my curves instead of causing vacuous ass gap? Fabulous.

The jeans I wore for nearly a month straight right after my dad died, when most of my mental stability was rooted in hay and sweat and horse shit? Irreplaceable.

But I’ll never wear any of them again. Because the body I had then is not the body I have now. This is not a bit of present mourning, mind you, because I love the body I have now. But it hurts to let go of the memories and the image of self that accompanied those memories. So it’s tough to look at those old jeans.

Still and all, they’re just jeans — and there are people in my area who could use those jeans at those sizes. The thrift store business is thriving in my neck of the woods, and turnover rates are amazing. I can’t account for specifics, of course, but as a general rule, it seems that people need whatever I can donate.

And I can donate these jeans, these jeans I’ll likely never wear again.

So it has come to be that my closet is devoid of skinny jeans. All the clothes that do not fit have moved on to greener pastures. All the pants I own are in sizes that fit me now. My mom, I think, part of her would be disappointed that I do not aspire to be a smaller size, not even in so small (pun intended) a way as hanging on to a single pair of skinny jeans.

I can only hope that is balanced by the understanding that my mother’s daughter loves herself as she is, in this moment, right now, nothing contingent on a smaller ass size.

Resolutions

I have to give credit to nominatissima for this post idea.

I’ve been of mixed feelings about New Year’s Resolutions for a while.

On one hand, I’m not a fan of making resolutions I likely will not achieve. Similarly, if I really do want to do something, I’m not likely to wait until January 1 to work toward that goal.

That said, I find that the new year can be a useful marker to bringing some of that “back burner” stuff more forward — goals that I can achieve reasonably as long as I approach them with sufficient resolve. (For instance, I did start running 5ks in 2011, due to a New Year’s resolution.) Surprise, surprise: Joining in a cultural time of resolution can help strengthen both my sense of accountability and therefore my resolve.

So I’m toying with a couple of resolutions for myself:

1. I want to run more. That is, I would like to make substantial progress either at my 5k time or via moving toward 7k or maybe even 10k. Both would be awesome, but given time constraints — especially of adding distance (which also includes safe travel constraints) — I would gladly take one or the other.
2. I want to write better. Somewhere in the last few months, I’ve noticed a pressure — a pressure that may come from entirely within myself — to write frequently. At times, I know this has come at the expense of writing well. Though I expect I will write less — and I don’t promise that no posts will suck — my priority going forward is going to be quality (as I see it) over freqency.

I’m pretty comfortable with those for myself, especially given their personalization and flexibility. That said, I’d be interested in knowing people’s feelings about New Year’s resolutions. Do you set them for yourself (every year or on occasion)? Do you generally follow through on them? Do you feel any kind of societal pressure to set these goals — sometimes I do — and if so, do you resent that?

A Queer Tumblr Cross-Post

No, I really do mean “queer” as in “some sexual orientation other than straight.” Originally posted at my Tumblr, but I thought it might be substantive enough to post here as well. Trigger warnings at the beginning for talk of suicide and self-harm.

Day 5 – Thoughts regarding inner turmoil about your sexuality; Did you have any? Did it escalate to self-injury or suicidal thoughts?

I don’t think any part of my (past) history with self-injury is related to inner turmoil about my sexual orientation.

That said, I do have some. Like, I know I’m queer — but I wonder how much of my same-sex attraction as been quashed (and/or opposite-sex attraction augmented) by:

• A childhood and adolescent religious community that viewed same-sex attraction as explicitly sinful, perverted, and predatory.
• Family members who would be varying degrees of Not Okay with me out of the closet. (Some would outright disown me, some would “love me anyway” but try to change me, some would try but just Not Get It over and over, etc.)
• A heteronormative society where EVERY RELATIONSHIP SCRIPT I EVER SAW during the first 15+ years of my life taught me how to respond in flirting/romantic/physical scenarios with guys. True, a lot of them aren’t realistic or are based on stereotypes, but even that is a far cry from the NOTHING I saw about girl-girl (or woman-woman) relationships growing up.

Now, I do not love my current partner any less, nor do I doubt the long term capacity of our relationship. However, I *do* wonder about my overall tendency to end up in (public, longer-lasting, more socially acceptable) heterosexual relationships.

How much of that is me, and how much is me playing it safe?

Day 11 & Day 12

Why, yes, another installment in the Daily Dose of Yoga challenge. As always, feel free to use, modify, or ignore at your own risk and will.

Day 11: Poses I Love to Hate

To be 100% honest, my initial reaction to a lot of the comments on my post asking for asana suggestions was, “Damn, if that is not one pose I hate!” Which does not make it a bad suggestion and doesn’t even mean I’m not intrigued by the idea of studying and analyzing it. It just means that right now, it is a pose I hate.

Right now, most of the poses that fall into this category are poses that confuse or frustrate me in the way they fit together. In other words, it doesn’t seem like I’m not strong or flexible enough to enter the posture. But I still can’t, and I can’t quite figure out why.

I used to have other poses I hated, though, because of flexibility, strength, and alignment issues. For some of them, I gained flexibility or strength — or corrected my alignment — and so now they’re less physically frustrating for me. For others, I learned new expressions or warm-up postures that make the final pose more accessible to my body. And for some, I’ve just had to accept that they are going to be difficult for the foreseeable future (which does, yes, help me hate them less). This isn’t true for every one, but some of the poses I used to hate, I now love.

I’m not so blithely optimistic that I think I’ll learn to love every pose I still hate. But I do think it’s perpetually useful and fascinating to examine and re-examine why I hate what I hate.

Day 12: Cow Face Leg Variations

(There’s probably no way to make that title sound un-odd, is there?)

[Video by Yoga with Esther Ekhart via YouTube.]

Anyway, gomukhasana is both a reader requested pose and a pose I currently love to hate. That said, I think I may hate it for slightly different reasons than are standard. Most people I know do not love it either because it is intense in the shoulders or intense in the hips. I love to hate it because it confuses the hell out of my hips. My problem is that I have trouble lining up my lower limbs so that my hips feel enough stretch. Changing the leg positioning can help me direct the stretch toward my outer hips, though not all of the variations below do that for me (but I thought it would be good to include all the leg variations I could find):

1. Extend the bottom leg straight out, like in dandasana. For me, this does reduce the sensation in both outer hips, though especially the bottom one (as might be expected).
2. Keep the legs as in ardha matsyendrasana. This is actually not the stretchiest for my hips either. However, if I’m not going to be staying in the pose long — say, in class — it’s a lot easier than the maneuvering I do to feel my hips.
3. Rock the pelvis forward and press up onto the hands for a few seconds to let the legs slide into better alignment. This is actually a huge help for me, I think mostly because it lets me slide my thighs with less weight on them.
4. Sit on a block, bolster, or other prop. I enjoy this because it actively changes my hip angle, which does increase the stretch in my hips while reducing tension in my low back. (Can be combined with #3.)
5. Adjust the heels, closer to the torso to soften the stretch, farther away to intensify it. (Can be combined with #3 and/or #4.)
6. Recline. A version of the leg position can be done lying on the back. Cross the legs over the torso, aligning the knees as much as is comfortable. With flexed feet, hold one foot or ankle in each hand. Bring the knees toward the chest, applying gentle pressure on the feet; you can play with foot position to maximize the benefits for you.

Next time, I’ll look into gomukhasana arms, which, I have to admit, is a pose I do not hate.

Hiding: Now

Continued from here.

Me. So, it turns out that my room is too small to get a full body shot in this position. I figured the arms were more important than the feet (which are hips width apart for me).

All of this has been a huge lead up to say that when my partner and I started running together at the beginning of this year, we were both wary of running in places with a lot of people: namely, on the tracks at city parks and on the sidewalks along busy streets. We planned our runs on side streets where few people would see or notice us. We were hiding, at least as much as our running circumstances would allow.

I’m not going to try to speak to my partner’s thoughts behind it, but I know I’ve been hiding while running for a lot of the same reasons why I hid my yoga. Partly to minimize mean-spirited and/or patronizing reactions from others, but also partly because I was convinced I was really bad at running and that this was a shameful failing on my part. (Truth: When we started, I may well have been really bad at running. I base this on the fact that I’ve come a long way since then, and I’m not particularly good about it now. However, in terms of judgmental reactions, I care a whole lot less.)

Then something happened: We got better. One happy consequence of that was that we started running longer distances, to the point where we can’t do our long runs now without spending some time going along a main street. Perhaps it’s just because we’re in a pair or because road running does not allow for interaction with passersby (or instructors) in, say, the same way that a yoga class does, but I’ve noticed that people give approximately zero fucks that we’re out running, however good or bad, along a busy street. (On the sidewalk, I mean. I expect people would give a lot more fucks if we were actually running in traffic.)

This is a powerful realization for me because, in all honesty, I’m still doing a lot of hiding in yoga. I’ve found one largely open-minded community studio, and it’s fabulous. That said, there are easily a dozen yoga studios in my city now, and I’m not branching out much. I’ve talked with representatives from a couple of studios on the phone, and both of them seemed to be really focused on the physical aspects (strength, flexibility, weight loss, muscle tone) to the exclusion of other benefits, so I don’t think my fear is entirely off base, though admittedly, my sample size is small and may therefore be unrepresentative.

Part of my hesitation is practical; my current studio has convenient class times and the most consistently affordable prices. Part is good-emotional: I have familiar faces with whom I like to practice, and I feel a certain amount of well-won loyalty that leads me to keep returning. But part is also fear-based: I’ve had some disheartening experiences with yoga studios in the past, and I’m not really sure I want to put myself out there again.

Except, of course, that I’m also curious about what else is out there — and I don’t want that curiosity to be stifled just because someone else can’t check their preconceptions about my body and its abilities.

So I’m starting to come out of yoga hiding a little bit more. Next weekend (according to the “today” where I am typing, which is not necessarily the “today” where the post gets scheduled), I’m signed up for a vinyasa workshop, still at my current studio but with an out-of-town guest teacher (who comes with the endorsement of one of my current teachers). The workshop is advertised as being appropriate for “continuing students and experienced beginners,” which should mean me, but that expectation has bitten me in the butt before.

In terms of people, I’m expecting a mix of studio regulars as well as folks coming just for the workshop. In terms of attitudes, I’m not sure. But at this point, my curiosity has gotten the better of my desire to hide. So I’m nervous, but I’m going.

Hiding: Then

When I first started practicing yoga, it was largely to help get some mental health issues under control rather than as anything I did for my physical health. Additionally, when I started, it was in classes (for credit and non) at my university — where the expectation was that people of differing backgrounds, goals, body types, and ability levels would be trying out yoga and/or developing their practices. College students would show up to yoga in all the ways that were typical of how students at my university dressed: in traditional athletic wear (though yoga pants were not a fashion “thing” yet), yes, but also in boxers and T-shirts, cartooned pajamas, and hospital scrubs. Most were what I’d term thinner, but larger people were definitely not absent from the class. The majority of students did not have a now ubiquitous yoga sticky mat. Some of us came to meditate, others to stretch, others because they needed to fulfill a credit requirement.

I won’t say it was the perfect low-stress environment — mostly because I was there to work on recovering from rape trauma, so nothing I did was low stress — but very little about the classes added to any stressors I was already feeling. I left those classes feeling like I could “do yoga.”

When on-campus classes were no longer a viable option for me, I started looking for yoga studios in town. Of the few choices available in my mid-size city then, I selected a studio with a location and classes that worked with my school and teaching schedules. The class that appealed to me most advertised itself as an “easy intermediate” class suitable for continuing students and fit beginners. Considering that I considered myself both a continuing student and fit, I thought it would be an appropriate choice for me.

“The beginner class is on Tuesday.” The first words as I entered the door with my mat, from the woman who turned out to be the instructor and studio owner.

“I’m here for this class,” I replied. “I called earlier this week asking if this was an okay class for someone who’s been practicing for a couple of years.”

“And you’ve been practicing for a couple of years?” Her raised eyebrows said she was skeptical.

I stayed for the class, already feeling self-conscious and on edge. During prasarita padottanasana, the woman next to me didn’t say anything but moved her mat far away — way more than was warranted by our positioning or the size of my body. The student on the other side of her started giggling.

I stayed through the end of class, but I did not go back.

The next studio I tried offered a multi-level class that advertised itself as suitable for most experience and fitness levels. And after a fashion, it was: For a lot of poses, the instructor offered multiple modifications and variations, so that most poses were accessible to most of the students in the room. Which is a really, really cool thing.

However, it didn’t take me long to get tired of the teacher confidentially telling me, “You’ll want to try the beginner version of this asana,” for approximately every second position, “until you’re strong enough to support your weight” — regardless of whether he’d seen me enter a particular asana before and instead of letting me use my own best judgment with respect to the class instructions, which is what he let everyone else do. Were most of the postures in question ones where my alignment was off or where I had particular potential to hurt myself, I’d totally get it; however, this wasn’t the case.

Nor was it endearing to watch the same teacher haul ass across the room to spot me in, say, the upward bow where I hadn’t asked for a spot and where my arms were plenty strong enough to support me — once leaving someone else they were spotting in the process.

I stayed with this studio for a few months, maybe eight to twelve individual classes. Ultimately, though, encountering a teacher’s negative assumptions about my body, even if they weren’t malicious assumptions, was draining.

I tried out a few more studios — three, I think, for a grand total of five, but it’s been a lot of years, so I could be mistaken — with no fundamentally new results, save for the fact that the “why are you here?” eyebrow look happened once in a basic yoga class as well. By that point, I’d used up all my nearby options, filled out repetitive “new student” forms, and spent a lot of money in the process. I was tired of it.

So I started hiding. I practiced only at home and never when anyone else — boyfriend, roommates — was watching. I never talked about my practice, never had a chance to ask question, and so never received instruction more individualized than a DVD could provide (which is to say, not at all). In a way, yes, it was insulating myself from the prejudices of others, which likely helped me to continue my practice. On the other hand, it was partly me internalizing those negative vibes, so I experienced enough shame that I felt like I should hide myself. The latter was quite limiting to my practice, both because it meant I wasn’t always receiving instruction that would have helped me and because there was some part of me that felt like I wasn’t good enough to be doing what I was doing.

[Loard, I did not expect this to run so long. Since I think I still have a fair bit more to type, I'm going to finish it in a separate post.]

Day 5 & Day 6

This is another set of suggestions for December’s Daily Dose of Yoga. Again, feel free to use, modify, delay, or ignore these suggestions as you see fit.

Day 5: Satya & Swadyaya

Truth and self-study. Or, as I like to combine them, self-truth as a result of self-study.

Which is a sort of an abstract philosophical lead in to these truths about myself:

1. Sometimes I feel self conscious about needing to take restorative care of my body, afraid that if I admit that I’m not up for a vigorous asana practice, this means that I am weak or unfit — and afraid that… someone (me, other people, the universe at large) will view this weakness as a moral or character failing rather than as what my body or mind happens to need at this time.
2. On the flip side, sometimes I am lazy. The end of a good, fiery practice feels awesome and purifying, but getting through the fucker is a shitload of work. Pushing my body to the edge may well be fulfilling, but it is seldom lighthearted, thoughtless fun.

Those two truths coexist within me. Either, both, or neither of them may surface as what serves me on any given day. In other words:

• Sometimes I am not lazy and also not preoccupied with taking restorative care of my body beyond what I consider “average” for someone who is able-bodied. There is no real conflict here.
• Sometimes, I feel physically unable, but my brain feels pressure for me to do, do, DO. In cases like these, I have to listen very carefully so that I give my body the breaks and restoration it needs.
• Other times, I feel physically able but am mentally lazy: I know I can do it with no negative repercussions, but I just don’t want to. It’s days like this that I just need to get over myself already.
• And still other times, I feel lazy but also recognize that underneath it, there’s a real issue with my body going through a vigorous practice. At times like these, I need to recognize the superficial laziness for what it is but also honor the deeper need to be gentler with myself.

The self-reflection comes from hearing these different needs, wants, and excuses from my body and deciphering which is which. The satya comes from adjusting my practice according to which voice is true today, regardless of which voices I hear loudest or most often.

Day 5: Yoga Journal’s Strengthen Your Core:

I don’t often use Yoga Journal videos because a lot of them tend not to make accommodations for larger bodies. In that light, this one is something of an exception. True, there are some portions — for instance, when the instructor recommends placing yoga blocks on the mat but so there is still hip clearance (there is no such place for me) — that still fit this description; however, I found that I was able to do most of the postures without modification — and the modifications I used were relatively straightforward (my blocks came off my mat to accommodate my hips; I moved on with my life).

[Video from Yoga Journal via YouTube.]

I might use this type of practice for any of the fist three Day 4 instances that I mentioned, depending factors like severity of pain or time issues. It’s intense, yes, but it’s also short. While this can be a bonus for me when I’m feeling fine and am just pressed for time, it can also be a way for me to compromise my conflicting body and mind truths. If I’m physically able but mentally lazy, sometimes a shorter time at a more intense practice is best for me. Similarly — or conversely? — if I’m mentally energetic but have limited stamina reserves, that same short but vigorous practice can let my drive feel validated without overly taxing my body.

I’m not suggesting that this asana practice is right for everyone 75% of the time; it’s not even right for me 75% of the time. I am, however, suggesting that it’s important for folks to find ways to balance the various needs of and demands on their bodies. This is one of mine; others are going to look a lot different according to individual abilities and needs. The important things are to listen to oneself and to be honest regarding the messages communicated.

Day 1 & Day 2

This post is part of my Daily Dose of Yoga December challenge. Each day is a suggestion for thoughts, breath techniques, or poses that are meaningful to me and that I hope will be meaningful to others. Of course, I don’t expect that everything that works for me will work for everyone else — and even when it does, it may not be quite the right fit for a given day. You should feel free to use, modify, delay, or ignore as works best for you.

Day 1: Listening

My goal for this challenge is to do some yoga every day in December, knowing that some days, I will have time and energy to do a vigorous asana practice while for other days, I’ll have limited or no time (or space) for asana at all. And of course there are the days when I’ll have sufficient time but limited energy or sufficient energy but limited time or both of those but pain, etc. My body is a complicated creature, and figuring out what it wants can be tricky.

And admittedly, there can be ulterior motives in the way. Sometimes, I am lazy and don’t want to do what I know I can do and what would be good for me. Other days, I don’t want to admit my real limits: I want to do what I know might not be therapeutic or even safe. Developing a habit of listening to my body — and discerning real need from excuse — is essential to keeping myself safe while growing in my practice. If I can even manage to do that every day this month, that is a good goal.

____________________________

Day 2: Restorative Knee Sequence

No special reason for this. I search YouTube (and other places — but mostly YouTube) for various interesting sequences. Sometimes I find what I’m looking for, sometimes not. I found this one when I was actually looking for beginning or morning routines. This is not meant to be either, but it seems like a nice restorative sequence that would be relaxing for anyone to do, knee issues or not:

Also, I think this is a practice a lot of people could do in bed — which means that if I hit bedtime and haven’t done my yoga for the day, this one is it!

Reader Input Time!

(Actually, reader input time can be always, but this is a direct effort on my part.)

Which yoga pose would you most like me to analyze and why?

Seven Things I’ve Done to Improve My Health

Inspired by this post by Caitlin at Fit and Feminist.

1. I found VaginaPagina.

(The link, by the way, is not explicit, though it may not be safe for everyone’s work.)

It’s a community focusing on sexual health and wellness, but it’s also been a really supportive online place for me for the last several years. Among other benefits, it’s a place that’s helped me to become confident in articulating the fuckedupedness of victim blaming, rape, and rape culture — as well as a community that’s helped me become a more assertive medical patient.

2. I’ve become a more assertive medical patient.

I’m sure that what some providers wonder if I don’t mean “pain in the ass,” but I’ve become a lot more active in voicing my health-related concerns. That is, I’ve started bringing with me a symptom/treatment diary with me to medical appointments, so providers could see how endo pain affects my life, which methods I’ve already tried, and the results each has given me. This has helped me become a lot more insistent — and successful — when explaining to providers that: 1) my pain is real and severe; 2) I don’t want to try the same ineffective techniques over and over. Yes, in part, that does mean I’ve played around with some different ineffective techniques, but at least they were more my choice — and I’ve not been traveling in the same pain loop.

3. I found (more) effective pain medication.

It still has its issues with functionality, and it pisses me off to no end how people get all alarmist anytime I mention my love for my opiate prescription. When it’s that or fighting the immediate urge to gouge out my uterus with a grapefruit spoon, the narcotics are fucking better for my health.

4. Yoga.

It makes the list both for helping me manage PTSD and physical pain, as well as a path to more general physical fitness. Super bonus points since it lets me multi-task, which means I’m more likely to: a) it it into my schedule; b) appropriately modify for various physical and mental health goals and needs. Which means it is something I can stick with.

5. I turned off the TV and put down the ladymags.

In both, there’s a very narrow range of body types presented — not just as beautiful but even as realistic. In other words, I found that generally doesn’t bother me too much to have someone thinner and prettier than I am to portray some standard of exceptional beauty. It does, however, bother me to see nearly every positively portrayed model or actress — including those labeled as full-figured, plus-size, or curvy — as thinner and prettier (more airbrushed) than I am. And it does bother me to see the vast majority of people who look like me either construed as deliberately stupid, ugly, lazy, or entirely headless. To view such small snippets of truth in isolation, out of context, is tantamount to lies — and it’s not healthy for me to believe lies.

6. I started running with my partner.

In addition to the health benefits of running alone, running with my partner is a chance for companionship and bonding — as well as giving us both the health benefits of running. Plus, it means I have an excuse to purchase awesome ridiculous shoes.

7. I let myself be a “badder” teacher.

Basically, it boils down to this: I take time for me. Planning exciting, creative lessons is wonderful but also time consuming. Volunteering for extracurricular activities is super. And I still do all of those, but I now do so in this context: At the end of the day, it is not lessons plans or gradings or extra obligations that teach my students. I teach my students — and I’m far more effective when I’m sufficiently healthy and refreshed to give them my best.

Teacher Secrets 10

I recognize that for some of you, I am not your first best chance at a high school education: I am your last.

And I take that very seriously.

Thoughts on a Word: Tori

(Yes, I realize how self-involved this post is. I don’t really consider it a “great truth of life” type of post. More like a personal pet peeve.)

Recently, I had a visiting consultant come to my room, armed with some kind of official document as their guide map. And like all official documents bearing my name, this one listed my first name as “Victoria.” Technically, that is correct, but calling me that is a surefire way to indicate:

1. You probably don’t know me well enough to be on a first name basis with me.
2. You are my mother and I am in “youngladycomehererightNOW” kinds of trouble.

This person did not call me that. Rather, this visitor took it upon themselves to shorten “Victoria” to “Vicky” — a name that, when directed toward me, has always, always pissed me right the fuck off.

Not that I think Vicky (in this or any of its other spellings) is a bad name. It’s a perfectly fine one for someone else. But it is not my name. My name is the one that’s attached to my identity.

I commented about this recently on someone else’s blog post about women taking their husbands’ surnames after marrying, but I think it’s worth repeating. For the first five or six years of my life, I’d grown up being called Tori almost exclusively (aside from, you know, those “youngladycomehererightNOW” moments), to the extent that I didn’t recognize “Victoria” as a name that applied to me — because mostly, it didn’t. So when I switched schools just before second grade and my mom introduced me to the teachers as Victoria, I was surprised and dismayed.

“I’m Tori,” I corrected, maybe only once but at least once. And I continued to refer to myself as “Tori” in my writing for a month or so into the school year, at least until open house.

“Should we be using that nickname?” one teacher asked my mom.

“No,” she responded. “That’s just something we call her at home.”

And so at school, I was Victoria for the next seven or eight years. Being called Victoria in school and Tori outside of it felt really, really weird, like I was in some respects a different person depending on where I was.

That’s with a name that is technically one of my own, one I’ve always used for legal and official purposes. When I’m called Victoria, even though it still doesn’t feel like me, at least I understand the rational basis for using that name.

However, there is no rational basis for someone deciding to call me Vicky, which is why I loathe when it happens. That’s someone feeling entitled to shorten my name to something it is not. My name is a fundamental part of my identity; other people don’t get to change it to suit their own preferences. While choosing to call me by the wrong name does not even make the What Is Wrong With This World List — I get that — it’s nonetheless an issue with a very simple solution.

Which is why, when this visitor called me Vicky, I smiled sweetly and said, “Please don’t call me that again.”

Pelvic Floor: Finding It & Moving It

There are a lot of ways I’ve heard people describe how to activate the pelvic floor muscles:

• Stopping the flow of urine.
• Kegeling.
• Clenching.
• The pelvic lift you feel when you tuck your tailbone.
• Trying to hold in a fart.

While I don’t think any of these descriptions are inaccurate, necessarily, I have encountered a couple of problems when putting them into practice on my own body.

First, there’s the reality that since the pelvic floor is a group of muscles — with different orientations, origins, and insertion points — rather than a single muscle, it doesn’t perform just one function. Therefore, an image that focuses on just one area of my pelvic floor — for example, urethra or vagina — isn’t wrong but is incomplete.

Second, I have other muscle groups that like to be recruited to do the work instead of actually using my pelvic floor. For example, “holding in a fart” involves me contracting my gluteal muscles while I feel “tucking my tailbone” predominantly in my abdominal muscles. In my case, I think it’s because I expected the pelvic floor movement to be bigger than it was — to be visibly noticeable from the outside — and those larger muscle groups were able to provide that look.

From talking with knowledgeable people, including my pelvic floor physical therapist, it seems fairly common for people be unaware of what pelvic floors do, be unclear as how to activate it completely, and/or misinformed about what it feels like when it’s actually happening. I can’t claim to speak for anyone else, but I know that for me, my PT was one of the first people who encouraged me to find my pelvic floor muscles by actually touching my pelvic floor — that is, by placing my hands on the areas of my body that are immediately external to my pelvic floor muscles. Essentially, this meant I spent a lot of time touching my crotch.

[Video from Michelle Kenway via YouTube.]

This is not my physical therapist, but these are most of the same basic awareness exercises I was taught to do. (I learned the perineum one while sitting, though I could definitely see how side-lying could be more comfortable for hands and wrists. And I learned one more with one hand on my perineum/sit bones and the other on the butt cheeks near my anus. But I cannot find any clips of that last one.) They, along with precise and detailed models of the pelvic floor, were immensely helpful to me in understanding what that area of my body looked like and how each muscle group felt when it moved.

I don’t think everyone needs to put their hands on their perinea and their pubic bones in order to visualize their pelvic floors — though it seems like there are people who don’t but might like to know about this option. And I definitely would have appreciated some insight before I was twenty-eight years old.

Path of Least Resistance

I post this alignment thought not because I’m an expert or because I even know if it’s a common issue, but because it’s one that I do myself. Also, it relates to the psoas muscles, and aren’t things nifty when they follow a theme?

Some relevant physical background: I have a very bendy lower back as well as psoas muscles that have some tightness. By “have some tightness,” I mean that while I don’t know they compare to other’s psoas muscles (psoases?), I do know that they are sometimes the muscles that keep me from deepening a pose. I also have an anterior pelvic tilt and chronic pelvic pain. It’s plausible that tight psoas muscles might be contributing to one or both of those, but it’s impossible to say for sure right now.

In paying attention to my psoas muscles, I’ve started focusing on my pelvic alignment in my standing postures — particularly forward-facing standing postures like high lunge and warrior I. For a long time — years, probably — I’ve been letting my pelvis tip forward in these poses so that my tailbone points more toward the back wall than it does toward the floor:

If you check out my butt angle -- THAT IS NOW THE TECHNICAL TERM, Y'ALL -- you will see that it points behind rather than down.

Compare this to a low lunge where I made a conscious effort to lengthen my tailbone toward the ground. The angle isn’t perfectly perpendicular, but there’s a noticeable difference from the first picture:

The butt angle here is diagonal, yes, but much more "down" than the high lunge butt angle.

For the record, it’s the same in warrior I — a pose that’s probably more relevant because I spend more time there — but I didn’t have a good set of comparison pics on file.

Because of the flexibility in my low back, letting my lumbar spine carry the poses has been the path of least resistance for me. Which is not always a bad thing but in this case meant I was not having as awesome an experience in warrior I and high lunge as I could. To be clear, even though this is a distinct possibility for some people, I never found overbending to be painful or uncomfortable here. So what, exactly, is the big deal?

The big deal, at least to me, is that I’m missing out on growth in the pose. If I tread the path of least resistance, doing what my body does comfortably anyway, I’m stretching the muscles that are already flexible and strengthening the muscles that are already strong. And I’m doing so at the expense of strengthening the muscles that are weak and stretching the muscles that are tight.

Because when I do try warrior I with my tailbone lengthening down, my pelvis in a neutral tilt, and my back leg as the primary anchor of the pose — there is some bodily change going on there, let me tell you. The psoas on my extended leg is stretching, maybe not super intensely, but quite enough that I can feel it. And on that same back leg, because I’m pressing into it so strongly, there is some kind of muscle on the outside of my hip — maybe my gluteus medius — that is working hard to stabilize my whole body in the pose. On the whole, it’s more freeing and more rewarding to feel like I’m making a difference to my body.

In this case, at this time, it does not serve my body or my practice to follow the path of least resistance.

Unwisely: Part 2

Continuing from here. Same trigger warnings for relationship abuse and self-harm apply.

There was a story.

“Would you walk away?” he asked one night after class.

The story was “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula LeGuin. It’s dystopic, about a city whose success depends on the forced suffering of a child. At some point while growing up, all of the citizens are told about the child, are required to see the child, and reassess thier understanding of the world from there. Despite learning that in this place, their happiness can only come from another’s suffering, most people choose to stay.

“Would you walk away?” he pressed, a little more insistently this time.

To be fair, I’d been silent a while, pondering. Because I recognized that I have had a pretty happy existence in this world and that I’d grown comfortable — complacent, even — in that happiness. My problems largely consisted of whether it was time to stop pining for the guy I’d been crushing on since ninth grade, dealing with the hassle of useless doctors, and wondering whether AP calculus was about to ruin my GPA in the coming year.

I wanted to say that even though the citizens of Omelas think they are happy, their happiness is not only superficial but self-deluding. Underneath it is the guilt their happiness is founded upon. Underneath is that child, one who is purposely made less so that others can be made more. What kind of happiness is that, I wanted to ask, to be dependent on the misery of someone else?

“I don’t think I could stay,” I said slowly.

Because really, what kind of authenticity is there to a life — to a joy — that is founded on lies?

“So you would walk away?” It was still a question, leaving space to clarify my response.

And yet I was comfortable in my complacent, maybe inauthentic joy. Happy, even, I could tell myself. I could make myself believe.

“Someday.” I stared at the moon, my voice barely audible. “I like to think I would, anyway.”

Trucking Through

My dad died a little over two years ago. If he had lived, he would have turned 59 this month. I mean to write about him more than I do, but I can seldom find the words.

Many of my favorite memories of my dad involve camping; most also involve fucking up. Fittingly, this particular story involves fucking up while camping.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of sixth or possibly seventh grade, my church organized a group camping trip at a site about an hour away from our house. What I thought this would mean was that all the families who signed up through the church would have a group of adjacent or at least nearby campsites. What it actually meant was that every other family who went ended up with a spot in the RV section while our family ended up with a spot in the tent section. Since we had a tent and not an RV, this was a good thing in terms of sleeping arrangements. Since it meant we were far enough away not to be able to know any kinds of planned events, this was pretty much fail in terms of being a community camping trip for us. .

Not that we were complaining. Much. Sure, my sister and I whined about not being able to hang out with our friends, particularly as we’d found out that they’d left for swimming on our walk to the RV site. And my dad grumbled about someone or other’s piss-poor organization. But this complaining lasted less than an hour — just long enough for my sister and I to confirm that other kids in our church group were, in fact, making plans and having fun without us — before we decided to get over ourselves and have fun anyway.

But prior to having fun, we had to set up the tent. Under the best of circumstances, this is an exercise in teaching the children creative combinations of cuss words. And this was not to be under the best of circumstances.

“Shit,” Dad exclaimed, rummaging through the back of the van.

I waited.

“There’s the tent,” he continued, tossing a duffel bag on the ground. “But we don’t have any tent poles.”

“We could drive home and get them,” my sister supplied helpfully.

“We could just drive home,” Mom added. Camping was never really her thing.

I didn’t want to leave, not even to get the tent poles. For one, that would be about two hours of our overnight camping trip (it ran Friday-Saturday only so we could all be at church on Sunday) wasted driving in a car instead of engaging in activities that could legitimately be considered “camping.” Moreover, I was worried that if the trip got to be too much of a hassle while we were back at home, someone would say “fuck it all,” and we’d just stay home. I was promised hiking and swimming and hot dogs dropped in charcoal, people. We were camping, and I wanted to stay camping.

Dad, I’m pretty sure, didn’t want to drive back home because he didn’t want to concede defeat. This time around, he was responsible for packing the tent, and so the lack of poles was technically his “fault.” Whether the rest of us were keeping score or not, he was. And the only way he could count this as a win instead of a loss was if he could prove that we didn’t actually need the tent poles.

“Do we have the stakes?” I asked.

Dad sighed. “We don’t have the stakes that came with this tent; they’re with the damn tent poles. But yeah, we do have the extra bag of stakes.”

In my family, we are kind of rough on tent stakes, particularly the flimsy plastic kind. As a result, we’ve been known to purchase an occasional extra set of metal stakes and to keep the mismatched ones in a backup back, just in case.

“So we can stake down the ground tarp and the bottom of the tent,” I replied, thinking out loud. “We just have to figure out a way to get the top to stand up.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “That’s the part that’s going to be a pain in the ass. How exactly do you suggest we do it?”

“Duct tape?” I asked, shrugging and smiling.

“Duct tape fixes everything,” my sister interjected.

“Or we could just go home,” Mom offered.

“If there is a way to pitch a tent with duct tape, I don’t know about it,” Dad said, his voice trailing off. In the same crate as the roll of duct tape — doesn’t everyone keep duct tape in their cars as a necessary supply? — were a dozen or so bungee cords, of varying lengths and thicknesses. He picked one up, examining the hooked metal end.

He unzipped the duffel and pulled out part of the tent, rummaging around until he found one of the nylon loops that would normally guide the tent poles. Threading the hook through the loop, he held it up and showed me, grinning in a way that said, “We are about to do something 100% ludicrous, but damn, won’t it be fun?”

I stared for a second, just letting my brain catch up, until I figured out what he was getting at. I scanned our campsite, which was fortunately almost entirely level. “There are three trees — there, there, and there,” I said, pointing. I looked again.

“I bet we have enough bungees to reach that one,” my sister pointed to a fourth tree a little farther away. “If we hook two of them together.”

As it turns out, it’s actually easier to hook bungee cords through guide loops than it is to thread tent poles through the same. (The poles are straight, and the cloth tent likes to bend, so doing that is about like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. No such problems with rounded hooks and round guide loops.) It is somewhat more difficult to attach the bungees to corner posts — in our case, trees — in such a way that they’re high and taut enough to hold up the tent and secure enough that they don’t slip down in the night or the wind. There is still much creative positioning of cuss words.

But it can be done — at least in a campsite with trees — even without duct tape. The tent held just fine through the night, amid light wind and rain. It is awesome; we still have pictures.

What’s even more awesome is that this is a camping memory instead of a “we gave up and went home” memory. Dad would like that.