Core Strengthening: Psoas

Another supine posture that’s somewhat reminiscent of wind-relieving pose (see how I was mature there and did not say fart pose?), this version involves movements that strengthen the psoas muscle:

(Video from corewalking via YouTube.)

For me, this series is less about the movements being physically difficult for my core and more about using them as a way to gain awareness of what the muscles in my core — in this case, my psoas muscles in particular — are doing. My psoas muscles are strong enough to perform the work in this series, but my erector spinae in that area are used to being recruited when there’s pull on the psoas, so that’s what they want to do here. It’s not a strong impulse, but it’s consistently present.

Don’t lie. You’ve missed my stick figure drawings.

I find it necessary to keep my hands on my hip points during this series. I’m not pressing down on my pelvis because I want to make sure my core muscles are the ones holding my core. Rather, keeping my hands there — at least right now, when I’m trying to develop awareness — gives me good feedback about what is moving, what is stable, and what wants to be working in my core.

Plus, you know, after I am done, I’m all set up to stretch my psoas in fart pose.

Unwisely: Part 1

Pre-reading notes:

1. This story contains descriptions of relationship violence as well as self-injury. It may be triggering.
2. This is a piece I wrote at age eighteen about events that happened mostly in the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. While I altered some personally identifying information and while I’m sure my perception was biased, it is an attempt to record the truth of those events as I understood them.
3. Given that I’m reworking an old draft, there’s a chance I will go back and edit posts well after they’re published. If there’s interest, I’ll publish a round-up announcement once I’m reasonably sure the story is in its final-ish form.
4. This is not the only domestic abuse story that affects my life. But it is the safest one to tell.

“And if I could,” my father wrote to me,
huge as a bear himself, when I was younger,
“I would dower you with experience, without experience.”
and I, in my turn, would pass that on to you.
But we make our own mistakes. We sleep
unwisely.

– Neil Gaiman, Locks

I was seventeen.

I was seventeen, and he was twenty.

Really, I was almost seventeen; it was June, and I turned seventeen in August. And he was almost twenty; he would have turned twenty in September.

We were not quite three years apart. Not quite three years, but a lifetime.

He had the most captivating green eyes. I know everyone says that, and maybe that is because every stereotypical teenager thinks that, but in this case, it was true.

Not because they were sparkling or twinkling or flashing. Not because they were an intense green. They were, in fact, greenish gray and kind of boring, in terms of appearances. But captivating. Not because they seemed to know what I was thinking or seemed to see into my soul, but simply because they were thoughtful. Not knowing the answers, but asking the questions.

That was a rare enough phenomenon in my experience with boys to make me pay attention.

And he did ask the questions, the questions that told me there was a mind working and thoughts forming behind those green eyes of his. When we had class together, he noticed details about the word choice and arrangement in the poems of Theodore Roethke and Sylvia Plath, and he asked about them:

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.**

And he always listened to — and watched — how people answered.

He noticed that I rarely joined in class discussions and arguments. Rather, I would sit back and watch the words fly across the room, sometimes spitefully, sometimes floating. And hear the tones, the inflections, the omissions, and the silences. I don’t think I would have been able to form an opinion on any poem just then. It was all I could do to take it all in.

He noticed this.

“You didn’t say much in class,” he started remarking on a regular basis. “What did you think?”

I started talking, hesitantly at first.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Some of the words — battering and scraping — are pretty rough. It’s hard to read them and not think of them hurting.”

“That makes sense. So why aren’t you sure?”

I looked away, not sure if it was a genuine question or if I was being called on my hopeless ineptitude in the class. “They aren’t the only words in the poem,” I replied, flustered.

“So I noticed,” he grinned at me.

I rolled my eyes, relaxing. “What I meant is that some of the other images — like where the child is still clinging to his shirt — make me feel like whatever this person did or didn’t do, it is a person the speaker loves or very much wants to love.”

** Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz“

Thoughts on a Chakra: Manipura

Confession: As a teacher, I fear parent-teacher conferences more now than I did as a student. To be fair, I’ve spoken with a lot of parents who feel similarly. Because when a teacher or parent requests a conference, something has usually already gone wrong. I’m not a fan of confrontation in general, and I worry that a conference will become a confrontation — and that I’m ill-equipped to confront.

Though this is starting to change, I’m still of an age where I’m mostly younger than the parents of my students. And regardless of absolute ages, parents of high school students still have more years of parenting experience than I do of teaching experience. I worry that parents will use my relative lack of years as a way to dismiss my voice and my concerns. Moreover, I worry that counselors, case managers, and administrators will respond to that dismissal by siding against me — though the latter has never actually happened.

With every conference, I’m gearing up for a worst-case scenario. Even if one hasn’t happened yet (for the most part), that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen next.

This is maybe why I spent some time today in asanas to activate manipura, the solar plexus or navel chakra, which purportedly governs our will and assertiveness — qualities I definitely think I need when it comes to all the parent conferences we have lined up this week and next.

I’m not sure what it is about these meetings that make me want to fortify my willpower. Maybe I’m afraid a parent is going to enter the room looking for a way to blame events on various teachers (something I’ve witnessed only rarely). Maybe I’m afraid that a student is going to tell a wildly different story than what I know to be true, and the student’s untruth (or at least very biased truth) will be believed. (It has happened to me before in non-teaching contexts. It’s not so far-fetched in my mind.) And maybe I’m afraid that despite the best and kindest intentions of everyone involved, something in the meeting will reveal my teaching to be complete and utter shit — or at least, something that is incompatibly failing with a given student.

That, I think, would be the worst: recognizing that I’m in the wrong but too afraid of change to change it.

It’s probably no surprise that manipura is correlated both to ideas like “gut feelings” (knowing that a particular act is one’s will, regardless of the ability to explain why) and “guts” (the courage to carry out one’s will). It’s certainly no surprise to me that I routinely require extra cultivation of both.

So I hung out with abdominal work today — particularly a lot of supine core work, which lets me concentrate on how my abs are working instead of how my shoulders or wrists or feet feel. I lay back with it, quite literally, until it was intense hard word — and then I stuck with it just a bit more.

And may the Flying Spaghetti Monster smite me with his ladle of marinara if he did not inspire me to this adulteration of the serenity prayer:

[Insert deity, higher power, positive human attribute, or awesome superhero] grant me
the courage to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can, and
the courage to admit the difference.

Because for me, those actions all stem from the same place.

Guest Author — Exercise: What’s the Point?

Katie (also known as Spiffy) is a college student studying Women’s and Gender Studies and Religion. When she’s not drowning in homework, she spends far too much time online and sews a lot of silly craft projects. You can find her at http://katie.casey.com/ or on twitter, @spiffykt.

I’ve always had the privilege of not thinking about my body. Sure, sometimes people mention it – the well-meaning friend who insists I eat more at lunch, and a few people remarking, quite casually, that they think they could snap my arms or collarbones in half if they wanted to. And of course, the message that I ought to be working to change my body has always been inescapable. In grade school there were advertisements on children’s TV urging me to get up and go! My college friends endlessly fret about how they really ought to go to the gym, despite apparently despising it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with telling kids to go outside or adults to hit the treadmill because it’s Good For You, I suppose. But I was having none of that nonsense. I found Jennifer Michael Hecht’s delightful post on gyms and poets, and took it to heart:

If you are a poet, you shouldn’t freaking care about [cultural pressure to exercise]. Only workout at the gym if you like it. You’ve been invited to the planet for a long yet short stay. Go make something you enjoy making. …Feeling guilty for not going to the gym is ridiculous. You don’t have to go there. Go there if you like it. But that place isn’t what it says it is. If it doesn’t feel right to you, that’s because there’s something a little wrong with it.

Yes! I am a POET. I don’t do that physical activity nonsense unless it’s for fun, I decided.

But, I have depression, and every doctor, shrink, and website I encountered urged me to exercise. I couldn’t imagine how a typical day at the gym would make me feel better – ages alone with my thoughts and a work-out machine, imagining everyone else judging me? No thank you! But yoga had a reputation for being particularly effective at bad-mood busting, and I could do it at home. So I stole my dad’s yoga mat and added sun salutations to my morning routine.

It wasn’t the immediate jolt of happiness and energy that I’d been hoping for. At first, it was novel to wake up early and do something other than check Facebook, but eventually the novelty wore off, and I wasn’t sure I could actually say I enjoyed my new habit. I didn’t dislike it – in fact, I was sort of excited by the whole project – but I couldn’t figure out why I was doing it.

I immediately came up with answers, of course. Daydreams of more strength in my arms, so no one would say they could snap them; of bones that didn’t stick out and a curvier shape. I caught myself looking at other women’s bodies enviously and wondering how I could change my routine just a bit to get there…

My inner feminist was displeased. I didn’t want to get sucked into the idea that exercise was primarily a means to change my body just for the sake of changing it.

I put aside that idea, and pretty soon came up with some new ideas. It wasn’t fun in the way I usually thought of fun – really, nothing done at 6am can be fun. But I found that waking up and just focusing on moving my body around made me feel unusually grounded, even if that sensation was killed by the morning commute. I liked the little challenge to start the day, the time to be quiet and mindful. It wasn’t like the way I hear my friends talk about working out, as an obligation, where the fact that you exercised is less important that what you did or how you did it. It also wasn’t the cure-all I had hoped for – in fact, it had very little immediate impact on my life – but I found myself wondering why I had even thought 10 minutes a day would make a major change, and why I thought it needed to at all.

The message I’d always gotten about exercise – that its purpose was to change bodies, that taking it in 30-minute doses several many times a week would make life noticeably better regardless of what I was doing or why – didn’t prepare me to think about exercise as something I might do for me, to clear out a tiny space of calm and quiet, without the goal of serious change in my body or health or lifestyle. When I stopped thinking about all those things I’d always heard yoga could do and started just doing it, the entire project made a lot more sense. Thinking about changing my body almost made me miss what I really get out of exercise: feeling more at home in my body as it is.

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If you’re interested in guest blogging at Anytime Yoga, you can email Tori at anytimeyoga@gmail.com.

The SHEER WILLPOWER Diet

This post discusses fat shaming, dieting, and disordered eating patterns.

Recently at The Curvy Nerd, Alexa expressed her frustration with other Internet commenters who evangelize (and cast judgment) via the “sheer willpower” diet:

And, for the record, the SHEER WILLPOWER diet of which I speak is the imaginary one that Not Fat People tell us about: “Oh, don’t you know that all you have to do is eat less and exercise more? Put down the Big Mac!” Oh, jeeze, I didn’t know it was that simple!

And certainly, it did take a lot of willpower to restrict my caloric intake to an amount that was — while not low enough to constitute a starvation diet — was significantly lower than what my body needed to maintain reserves of physical stamina, mental concentration, and emotional stability. It took willpower to shun, in any amount, the foods I perceived as unhealthy. It took willpower to select exercise activities with the sole goal of calorie-burning efficiency rather than discovering and respecting my body’s needs and mind’s desires.

It took even more willpower to reorder my thinking to believe this was healthy. And it required a metric fuckton of the stuff to silence my doubts that I was happy in this life where I pinned my hopes on the slimness of my body.

But as Curvy Nerd commenter Robin pointed out:

One thing I think a lot of people don’t understand is that no matter what size you are, it takes a lot more willpower to accept yourself than it does to starve yourself. Denying onself food is easy, learning to have a healthy relationship with it is much, much harder.

It’s taken more willpower to experiment with exercise until I’ve found types I enjoy and negotiated ways to fit them into my daily or weekly routine. Yes, really — because it’s meant trying a variety of exercises that I don’t enjoy and giving myself enough time at each one to determine whether the culprit is the exercise or the unfamiliarity. It’s meant setting goals for myself that go beyond body measurements.

It’s taken more willpower to give myself permission to eat or not eat a food as I want — to refuse to guilt myself for it afterward, to untangle myself from assigning morality to foods.

It’s taken more willpower to deconstruct the bodies I see represented as normal and good television, movies, and advertisements. To realize that when a very narrow range of body sizes is presented as all of the bodies that we’re going to label “good” — it’s an artificial standard that a lot of people have a stake in perpetuating. To try to remove myself as a stakeholder on a daily or hourly basis — that takes even more willpower.

Even with that revelation, it’s taken two metric fucktons of willpower to stop judging other people’s bodies — to check myself and try again whenever I fuck up and body-shame. It takes three metric fucktons when that body is my own.

On my computer right now this instant, there are seven different articles and ads reminding me of all the ways society and consumerism wants to tell me that my body is not good enough. It takes SHEER WILLPOWER to tell them to fuck off.

Slow

When it comes to running, I am slow, always have been. Stamina and pacing I have in abundance. Raw speed, not so much.

Part of this, I’m discovering, has to do with my muscles. No matter how much I stretch or warm up beforehand, I’m never really loose until I’m a kilometer or two into a run. Even then, when I’m as limber as I get, my speed trails after the low end of average. Part of it may be that this is simply how my body is designed to move.

At this point in my life, I’m okay with that.

I wish, though, I’d come to this realization sooner. Near the beginning of my adolescence, when I started to look on running as a stand-alone sport (as opposed to something one did around the bases in T-ball or what one was not supposed to do indoors), there was a decided emphasis on fast speeds over relatively short distances. Races topped out at one and two miles (no cross country for me in junior high), where coach put all the slow kids — because no one watched or cared who won those races anyway.

It was easy to feel like I was a bad runner because I struggled with these distances. It would have been nice to have heard the possibility that one reason I struggled may simply have been that those distances were too short for me.

I’ve warmed up to running longer distances in no small part because here, it’s okay to be slow. Or rather, a good three mile pace is not the same as a good one mile or hundred meter pace. As it happens, a three mile pace — even for three and probably for more miles — is one that works a lot better for my body. I’m still slow, but I’m a lot closer to slow-average instead of notably slow.

As I run, I’m used to adding distance. Not that I don’t work for the increased stamina, but it builds in my body in a sense-making and predictable manner. If I start with X distance and then move to X + 1, the first time will be weird, the second time will be more familiar but harder, the third time will start to feel like maybe I can actually do this — until eventually X + 1 feels like my new normal.

It doesn’t work that way with me and speed. I try different runs: longer or shorter, intending to be faster or slower. The most predictable result is that, regardless of my brain’s intent at pacing, my time over any particular distance remains remarkably consistent. Even when I’m trying to improve it.

It’s a little tricky to stay in balance negotiating all of this. On one hand, I don’t want to, even unconsciously, use my body’s inclinations as an excuse for not challenging myself. That is, with most runs (save, “fuck it, I don’t really want to run today, but we’re going anyway because we said we would, dammit!” days), I consciously try to push my edge. On the other hand, though, neither do I want to get too frustrated when progress on this front doesn’t come as reliably as it does in other areas.

So I tell myself that what’s important is that I am running and I am pushing my edge while trying to let go of my attachment to the results. And 99% of the time, I believe that to be the truth.

But every once in a while, I have a run like I did last night, and that truth is hard to remember. Because being faster — and knowing I’m faster — feels so damn good.

This isn’t the title I remember.

This post discusses domestic violence.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

I should write.

I’m scared to write. (Of memories, not for anything happening in my life now.)

I thought of copying a story I wrote years ago. It’s good; it’s relevant.

I can’t find what I did with the computer copy.

I found a handwritten copy in a composition book. It’s the story, but this isn’t the title I remember. Which may mean this is a working copy, or it may mean I remember the working title better than the final.

The date tells me it’s not the first draft. And the opening line confirms, unerringly, that this is the right story. A decade later, that line still haunts me.

But I know this isn’t going to be a simple matter of cut and paste. My writing then wasn’t as strong as my writing now, and this is possibly not even the strongest version of my writing then.

I’m going to have to re-read this story. I’m going to have to re-work it, re-write it, re-live it. It’s going to be especially awkward in a blog because odds are good I will go back to edit at least one post days after I make it.

And it’s going to hurt.

But that’s okay. Because the hurt is in the past and the awkwardness is inconvenience and what matters now is that it’s a story worth telling.

And it is.

Beauty Labor: Counting the Minutes

When I first read Autumn’s post discussing minutes of beauty labor and various groups of people, it piqued my interest. While I do think it’s informative from a social perspective, this particular post is about my personal curiosity: How many minutes of beauty labor do I spend in a day?

Autumn contacted me, expressing similar curiosity. We decided to monitor and record our minutes in a work week to come up with average figures for each of us. This is my account; you can read Autumn’s story here.

Monday: 24 minutes
Tuesday: 17 minutes
Wednesday: 27 minutes
Thursday: 22 minutes
Friday: 33 minutes

Weekday average: 24.6 minutes

More than the numbers themselves, what I’ve been noticing is the strength of my urge to explain and justify my numbers.

For instance, I want to qualify those minutes by saying that my work day starts at 6:15am, and I am not a morning person, so I learned long ago to streamline the prep process: I’d be out the door in nine minutes if I could reliably remember where I put my keys.

I find myself wanting to point out that I don’t have a whole lot of time for beauty labor while I’m at work. Wash my hands after I pee, check to make sure I have not smeared marker broadly across my face. On occasion, I get home to discover that smaller smudges have survived such a perfunctory check.

And I find myself almost needing to explain that these minutes might give a skewed picture. For example, anything that’s likely to be more time intensive, such as shaving my legs or tweezing my eyebrows, is necessarily relegated to my weekend. Additionally, the reason it takes me only a minute or two to style my hair on a daily basis is mostly due to its cut, which means I’m spending an hour or so in a salon once a month.

But more importantly, I’m wondering where this desire to justify comes from. I think it’s rooted in this perception I have, that I maybe spend fewer minutes on beauty labor than the average or median. Whether that perception reflects reality or not, the idea that my beauty labor minutes might be not the norm… well, it makes me feel abnormal.

Because I know my looks are pretty average. Not that I think I’m ugly, but I recognize that I do not magically roll out of bed meeting the mainstream media’s de facto definition of “conventionally attractive.” If I spend fewer minutes performing beauty work, it might not make me less beautiful, but it almost certainly results in me appearing less conventionally attractive.

So to have those minutes listed with no qualifications, no excuses, says to me, “I’m not meeting societal expectations, and I’m okay with that.”

And that’s not completely true for me yet.
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How much time do you spend, on average, on beauty labor? What are your feelings on that? Do you generally find that time pleasurable or more often routine? Are there times you resent beauty labor or feel guilty for performing it?

The Price of Pretty

“You look so pretty!”

It’s the first day of my second year as a teacher at this school, and my principal is gushing at me. I wonder what I looked like on the first day the year before that the difference is so drastic.

From the bottom up:

On my feet are a pair of white Anne Klein sandals. They were an impulse purchase — because I imagined they would go perfectly with my dress and jacket, not because I could justify needing them. Simple and elegant with just the right hint of metallic accent, they made my feet scream by second period. They are still in pristine condition because, to date, that is the only time I have ever worn them.

Price tag $79.

Above that is a white suit jacket. First, let me say that there is no practical reason in the everloving brown desert for me to own a white suit jacket. It was purchased for aesthetics only.

This was the jacket that taught me that despite my measurements, the posted size chart, or the number of Xs, XL — or XXL — in any straight-size store does not mean me. This was the jacket that advised me of the “three button minimum” bust containment system and that led me to wonder why “curvy fit” isn’t a known option for upper body wear.

This was the jacket that reintroduced me to the phrase “football shoulders.”

Had it been a more practical color, I might have made better use of it and therefore appreciated it more. As it stands, it is a perfect match to the shoes — pristine white, worn once.

Price tag $168.00.

Beneath that is a dress, the dress, my dress. Teal, my color. I wore this dress to three interviews earlier in the year. Among my employment applications, I received three job offers. Yes, there is a correlation, at least part of which I attribute to confidence. I prefer not to attribute it to the fact that the dress makes my curves look great, though the latter might also be true.

Though I don’t want to ignore the curves bit because it matters. Because this dress cost me miles driven and walked, cost me hours and days in stores. Cost me the chagrin of asking for a larger size when I was damn near stuck in the smaller — only to discover that the store “must have sold out” of the size I wanted. Cost me laughs and gasps and tongue-clicks of disapproval from sales associates who never dreamed a “girl my size” would “dare” to wear something “so fitted” to an interview.

Because, totally, it makes sense to wear — to an interview — clothes that do not fit?

A dress that’s figure-flattering, available in my size, and appropriate for career situations?

Price tag $199.

Worn four times, would have been more if I didn’t require assistance to get in and out of it.

Beneath that, my lucky internet bra. Suffice it to say I can guarantee that bras my size are not available for sale in my city.

Price tag $77, not counting the shipping on various bras I have purchased and returned.

Above all that, my makeup. What’s catching my principal’s eye is my Sweet Libertine mineral eyeshadow in colors of awesomeness — that is to say, tasteful luminescent neutrals that match my glasses and complement my eyes — on me. In conventional attractiveness terms, it looks fabulous on me.

In intimate terms, it represents the minutes and hours I have spent poring over my pores, lamenting the fact that, well past adolescence, I still have acne. It represents the time I have spent analyzing how to make my face less cheeks and more cheekbones — more eyes and lips, less eyebrows and nose. It represents wanting people to look me in the face when speaking to me and being insecure with what they see once they do so.

The cost of tricking someone — me — into believing people want to look at me.

Price tag, about $25.

How much of that was money well spent?

Invisible Illness Backtracking

And cross posting, as this originally appeared on my Tumblr.

22. My illness has taught me:

1. That there have been basically no new advances in endometriosis management in the last 10 years.
2. That we still have a long way to go in separating a woman’s quality of life from her baby-making potential. (To be fair, the ability to have biological children is a huge factor for some women. For others, though, it’s somewhat or very much less important than day-to-day living quality.)
3. That a lot of people (presumably without chronic pain) don’t understand what “chronic pain” actually means.
4. That there is all kind of judgment against people who take pain medications regularly, particularly when those medications aren’t societally approved (e.g., marijuana) or have the potential to become physically addictive (e.g., narcotics). Moreover, that a number of folk are willing to concern troll about what “might” happen to you as a side effect of a given medication without understanding the certainty of the pain you will face without it.
5. That everyone and their cousin has a Magic Fucking Solution for endo… except, you know, when you’ve tried that. Twice.

I’m not sure which of those frustrates me the most. (Personally, it varies depending on day and context.) Discuss.

Low Creativity

It’s that time of the school year again… tunnel time. Far enough in that the honeymoon of the beginning is over, but not so far that I can see my way out. Don’t get me wrong: This is a standard cycle. My kids are, on the whole, seven different kinds of awesome, but that doesn’t mean they don’t the vast majority of the creativity and writing potential I have to give. So I suppose the issue is less that I have “low creativity” and more that I have “low creativity left.” I have probably an above average level of the stuff, but I am using it up on a daily basis.

Regardless of how it parses, the bottom line is the same: I need extra help to maintain a quantity and standard of blog posts. In that vein:

1. Is there anyone interested in guest blogging? No prior blogging experience necessary. I’m happy to name and link you according to your preferences. I only ask that any posts you write are in keeping with the basic spirit of this blog (which I might categorize as “living in this body and trying to love it,” whether related to yoga or not). Interested writers can comment here or email me at anytimeyoga@gmail.com.
2. If guest blogging doesn’t work for you right now but you have ideas or suggestions for future blog posts — care to share them? While my writing time is limited, inspiration is the primary thing I’m lacking.
3. Is anyone interested in reading what I write for my classes? I write every assignment along with my students, the essays (et al.) are real. I’m just not sure whether folks want to read what I’m essentially using as sample essays and teachable moments.

Also, if there are other comments or items of feedback here (e.g., I know there have been accessibility issues with the layout) that don’t entirely fit into the listed points, still feel free to mention them. Consider this an open thread if you like.

Banned Books Week, Masturbation, and Deenie

As you can probably surmise by the title, this post discusses masturbation.

Deenie didn’t make me masturbate.

That is important to know, right up front, even before knowing what this post is about.

For folks who didn’t know, the American Library Association’s 2011 Banned Books Week runs from September 24 through October 1.

For folks who didn’t know, the main reason Judy Blume’s novel Deenie is challenged is because it discusses an adolescent girl’s masturbation. Even though Deenie didn’t make me masturbate.

But let’s back up a moment or a few decades.

Between grades 5 and 12, I attended conservative fundamentalist religious schools.

Somewhere in either grade 5 or 6, I acquired a copy of Deenie from some book sale somewhere. My mom bought it for me. (For any of the ways my parents and I clashed, they always allowed me to read whatever books I wanted. Because, you know, reading. Books.) Like every other book I read during the school year, I brought Deenie to school. I read it before school, after school, and during indoor recess. (Note to all: Indoor recess in Michigan is boring as odorless shit.) I did not read in class, I am sure; I was not brave enough for that until my sophomore year of high school.

But I read Deenie. In school. At one point, a classmate asked me about it. I said it was about a girl who wanted to be a model but was recently diagnosed with scoliosis.

Note how there is no masturbation in my one-sentence summary.

Though, yes, there is masturbation in the novel. One issue Deenie, the main character, works through is that she has a “special place” on her body where she touches herself, and it makes her feel good. At some point, one of her teachers — maybe her health or PE teacher? — reads Deenie’s anonymous question (via non-digital drop-box) and identifies the behavior as masturbation.

And that rocked my world.

That is the moment where I recognized that I have been masturbating since I was approximately five years old. More importantly — that there was a name for this thing I was doing and that it is normal. In all honesty, I didn’t identify with the “special place” descriptor at that point because what I was doing didn’t make me feel particularly good. (Not that it made me feel bad, but it was more neutral-release oriented than it was sexual-pleasure oriented.) But it was incredibly validating to recognize that I was engaging in a behavior that was normal and understood and part of a healthy development.

For a decade or more of my life, I’d had no word for masturbation. For five or more years of my life, I’d been routinely engaging in a behavior — that I hadn’t understood and that I’d tried to hide from people without understanding why — for which I had no name.

I want to make this clear: For at least five years of my live, I had no word for this behavior but was regularly engaging in it anyway.

In other words, Deenie did not make me masturbate, did not even plant the seminal idea of masturbation in my mind. I had that covered half a decade beforehand.

What Deenie did do was give me a name for my activities, along with a cultural context in which this activity — and I — was normal and acceptable. In a place where my parents did not tell me, my friends did not know, and I could not ask my teachers, this novel gave me the power of language — to name my activities for what they were and to proceed with my life accordingly.

I never mentioned this to anyone at school, I am certain. In the novel, some of the adolescent characters don’t accept masturbation as an okay thing. My place in the social hierarchy of school was not so secure that I could afford to have my classmates think of me like that.

Yet at some point when I was more than halfway through the book but less than approaching the very end, a (female) teacher approached me and asked me not to bring the book anymore. “It’s not appropriate for a Christian school.”

At this school, the same folks who taught adding fractions and sentence fragments also taught the finer points of salvation and going to hell. Being told that this book was Not Okay for school, while not government-sponsored censorship, nonetheless had a chilling effect on me. Not only did I stop bringing Deenie to school, but when I read in the future, I questioned whether it was safe for me to be seen reading those at school either.

Technically, Deenie was never banned or even formally challenged in my school. Because she didn’t have to be. What did happen was that adults used a climate of social and religious dogma to remove material they deemed “objectionable” from public sight and discussion — even though that “public” was middle-schoolers and the material was by and large appropriate for its audience.

Certainly — as a non-government institution telling one of its students not to bring a particular book to school — this was 100% within the scope of the First Amendment. My school had the right to make this rule for me, but that didn’t make the rule right.

And 24

I thought it wouldn’t be fair to post my endo pet peeves here without also posting my list of appreciation.

24. But I love it when people:

1. Offer to drive.
2. Understand when I need to cancel plans.
3. Offer lower stress alternatives to social engagements (e.g., movie night at a friend’s home does not require my same amount of spoons as does a movie in a theater).
4. Accept that there are plenty of things I can do.
5. Join me in those things.
6. Accept that when it comes to what I can and can’t do on any given occasion, I’m probably the one best able to determine the difference.
7. Don’t express alarm at the “high level” of “addictive drugs” I’m taking. (Seriously, people. The most dangerous medication I take is Tylenol. Not that I don’t take scheduled prescription medications, but in terms of amounts and possible impact on my health, acetaminophen tops the list.)
8. Do not ask when I’m wearing yoga pants in public or sneakers to work, nor look at me like I’ve committed some egregious fashion sin.
9. Don’t look at me like I’m a heinous person for using a bathroom stall with hand rails or a bus seat near the front.
10. Don’t make me prove myself.
11. Bus drivers — When you wait until I am seated before you move the bus.
12. Change the subject. (I know, for as much as I post about it here, this one makes less sense. But in this case, this blog is an exception to the rule.)

Thoughts on a Word: Power

Last period, last question.

Unexpectedly, the bell rings early.

(WTF, PA system? The one time we hear the bell is the time it’s not supposed to ring.)

Twenty-six students get up to leave.

I say, “We’re not finished yet.”

Twenty-six students sit back down to answer one last question with zero complaint.

Aesthetics

But it has nothing to do with aesthetics, so we all but miss it in every single workout.

– Bryan Kest (via my memory), talking about the psoas muscle during navasana in one of his Power Yoga DVD practices

I may not have every word right, but the basic sentiment is accurately portrayed. And whether a lot of people are particularly likely to need psoas strengthening, the idea, I think, applies to physical fitness more broadly.

First, and this is applicable to my psoas, I tend to ignore stretching some muscles that don’t directly affect my appearance — or that I don’t think of as directly affecting my appearance. For example, I know I have some stiffness in the muscles along the sides of my ribcage. While I do make an effort to stretch them at least a little each day, I’ve never sequenced an asana practice to target the release of those muscles. One part of the reason for that is because my tightness there, while not comfortable, doesn’t really affect the aesthetic shape of my body.

Contrast that with the muscle tightness I feel across the front of my shoulders and chest. Not only have I sequenced personal practices specifically to open up that area of my body, but I’ve also attended a number of classes and used a myriad of videos with the same stated purpose. In some of those instructional practices, the teacher brought in the idea of aesthetics. Having a tight chest and shoulders can contribute to back pain, yes, but I’ve also witnessed plenty of yogis demonstrate the hunched shoulders and rounded spine and remark on how that isn’t very attractive.

Although I’m not sure I’d “all but miss” my heart center if it weren’t a factor in creating what I consider an aesthetically pleasing line to my body, I can’t deny that aesthetics plays some role in the muscles I choose to stretch.

Similarly, aesthetics also plays a role in the muscles I choose to strengthen. Regular readers might have noticed my recent-ish (in the grand scheme of my practice) fascination with feet. For the past few years, I’ve experienced intermittent foot pain in my standing postures. I chalked this up to my foot anatomy and the increasing frequency, duration, and physical intensity of my asana practices, deciding it must be a side effect that comes with the territory. Until I stumbled on the idea online — while researching another topic only tangentially related — it had never even occurred to me that I could stretch and strengthen the muscles in my feet — the way I did the rest of my body — so they’d be better able to support me in standing poses.

Again, I don’t think aesthetics is the only force at play here, but if it were my butt or thighs hurting in the postures? I probably couldn’t avoid knowing how to strengthen or tone those if I wanted to. However, strong, supple feet are really not a showcase image in most people’s conceptualization of the aesthetic ideal.

But it goes deeper — or maybe broader — than that. Recently, the blog Living ~400lbs posted The Fitness Question, asking readers if the benefits of exercise would be worth it if they never lost weight. Weight loss is only one aspect of aesthetics, but I sometimes wonder if there’s a similar principle at play on a grander scale — that is, if a major motivator in people’s exercise habits is the hope or expectation that it will help them to look a certain way.

The expectation can take a number of forms; “tone” is one I hear often — that regular exercise will increase the appearance of muscle definition (which may or may not include muscle mass) while decreasing the appearance of surface fat. Of course this doesn’t happen with every body: on mine, the muscles arrive where they will, but the surface fat that’s always been there I now acknowledge as a permanent fixture of my form.

I also sometimes interpret “tone” as “flexibility” — that is, a truly toned muscle will stretch as well as contract. For a long time, I hung on the hope that if I toned and stretched my muscles enough, I’d eventually develop the flexibility to get into every single yoga asana (or at least every asana a teacher might reasonably demonstrate in class). It took some study of anatomy and even more self-study to understand that:

1. There’s more to it than that. Bone shapes, sizes, and angles vary widely — and they also play a significant role in what a particular asana looks like — not to mention how it feels — for any given individual’s body.
2. Sometimes — like in the case of arm binding — regardless of muscle flexibility or the shape of my spine or shoulders, it ain’t ever gonna happen, at least not in a way that is beneficial for me.

Of course it’s good to use anatomical- and self-knowledge to determine what’s causing any particular limitation and whether it’s helpful or harmful to try to push a given edge. And in the course of that determination, it’s empowering to recognize the pressure (from self or society) to strive for a particular aesthetic and to name that hangup for what it is.

There are aspects of movement, meditation, and health that have nothing to do with aesthetics. It’s a rewarding challenge to find the space for them.

Fixing It

Pain is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong.

I’ve heard this hundreds of times over the years, and yep, I think it’s basically true. Certainly, the “something” may be far more physically complicated than the specific location experiencing the pain (e.g., experiencing low back pain because of a neurological issue) and may not be entirely physical at all. But generally speaking, pain feels unpleasant (specific sensory play experiences being one notable exception), so it’s fairly easy to get on board the train of “pain equals something wrong.”

But I also sometimes hear a variant that troubles me:

Pain is your body’s way of telling you something is wrong so you can fix it.

Because, well, I’ve sort of given up pinning hope on the idea that what’s causing me pain (which, to the extent that can be determined, is a combination of active endometriosis, nerve damage, pelvic floor tension, scar tissue, and adhesions, with maybe some Crohn’s disease thrown in) is ever going to be fully “fixed.” Whether they phrase it as “gosh, we’ve never seen this before” or “yeah, these kinds of cases are always tough,” it’s pretty clear that specialists are at a loss for good alternatives regarding “what to do with [me].” At times, I feel I’ve disappointed them because my body didn’t give them the chance to show their awesome fixing skills, but whatever.

To be clear, I would be ecstatic if I suddenly found myself facing pain-free days. But in terms of actively pursuing different and new permanent (or relatively so) pain relief strategies — taking time, energy, and attention away from the rest of my life — I can’t keep doing that, you know? So I’m learning to let go of the desire that I will ever be “fixed.”

In that light, the purpose of pain being “so you can fix” what’s wrong rings hollow, even alien, to me. In fact, so does the concept of a purpose for pain at all. Because of this, it’s troubling when pain is approached solely from a framework of “fixing” — because it’s a framework that fails me.

School Pictures

From late last week.

Yes, I sat for my school picture today
barefaced. Because let’s be honest
when was the last time you saw me in
make-up? Second, even by second
period my whirlwind of teaching
has made my hair escape its style
sprouting a silhouette of improbable
angles. The smudge on my glasses
maybe my face too is visible.
I meant to do that.
The ink on my hand you can’t see
but know it’s there. Mostly
that smile, equal parts
exasperation and amusement.
Years from now
this is how you will know me.

No Blame

“I blame my parents.”

I’ve been talking with a few people in real life about body image and struggles with weight. The above sentiment seems to be a common thread. While the specific connection varies, at least a few people I know link their current body size to their parents.

In some cases, this link involves genetic disposition, which I think makes sense. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see:

• the blue eyes of my father’s father
• the broad shoulders and wide hips of my paternal grandmother and her daughter
• my dad’s nose
• my maternal grandmother’s jawline and cheeks
• the dimple in my chin that came from my mother’s father
• my mom’s hands

(I grew up being told that I didn’t look like anyone in the family — at least compared to my brother and sister, who more clearly take after my dad’s appearance — so these recognitions are important to me.) It makes sense that some of the traits I inherited — like bone structure — might correlate to a higher body mass for my height. Similarly, I can see where other traits — like full cheeks and a strong jawline — might lead to a fatter appearance, regardless of their negligible affect on my weight.

And if that’s true for me, it’s likely true for at least some others. Some of the blueprints in our genetic codes influence the body shape we present to ourselves and the world. At this point in life — when we don’t get to choose our parents and as we already exist in the world — it might be a matter of playing the hand we’re dealt.

In other situations, folks I talked to spoke of blaming their parents for childhood eating habits. In the interests of full disclosure, these are people who — as adults — have settled on a basically whole foods diet (not restricting or counting calories or other nutrients but basically trying to avoid processed foods as much as possible) and basically have the access (money, time, and proximity to quality grocery stores) to sustain it. So — particularly assuming that they grew up with a socioeconomic status equal to what they have now, which I don’t know to be true — it’s maybe more understandable that they’re critical of parental choices to prepare, pack, and serve more processed foods.

I will say this: For a number of years, I was functionally the oldest child living in the house. I learned to cook pretty early on, and a good number of the meals I was expected to prepare included macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, Spaghettios (with franks!), and — if I was imbued with an extraordinary amount of trust on any given day — canned tomato soup and grilled cheese. In the whole foods scheme of things, none of these meals was particularly nutritious, but all of them shared two redeeming qualities: 1) they were simple to prepare, mostly only requiring the ability to warm ingredients; 2) each had a shelf life of approximately forever, meaning that my parents could purchase them in quantity each payday without fear of them turning rancid before we ate them.

But mostly, in terms of parents and body size, what I remember is my mother. Not that I remember her as a fat woman or a thin woman because over the years, she’s been pretty much all the sizes. The vast majority of who she is — her friendliness, her enthusiasm, her intelligence, her compassion, her sociability, and most importantly her worth as a person — hasn’t changed the whole time. Just the color of her hair and the shapes of her body.

However, when I think of my mom and her attitudes about bodies — specifically her body, my body, and my sister’s body — I don’t remember what she looked like at any given point in time. I just remember the actions and reactions. The months, perhaps post-New Year’s resolution, when all artificial sugar was banned from our diets. The mixed messages of being told to “go out and play;” told that we should exercise because it was good for us, where “good for us” implied achieving or maintaining a “skinny” weight but never being joined in activity for the fun of it; the inability of my body to meet her approval.

I remember one time, I was in middle school, and my mom was helping me find a themed outfit for some type of school spirit day. She dug through her closet and trunks and found some kind of maroon jumpsuit. (I don’t remember what the spirit day was, so I have no idea if it was at all appropriate for that.) I tried it on; it didn’t fit, too snug in the shoulders, ribcage, and butt.

Mom frowned. “I don’t know why you can’t wear that. It fit me in college; I can’t believe it doesn’t fit you now.”

I’m not sure if she intended it maliciously. Probably not. But the message that statement sent was that my body was fatter than it should be.

I want to be clear here. While I do think that my mother’s attitude was likely a causative factor in my own developing relationships with food and my body, I don’t think either of my parents are to blame for my current size. Because, quite simply, I don’t see my weight as anything deserving of blame.

Core Strength: Chaturanga

See? I have not forgotten about core stuff, I promise. I think it’s partly, now that I’m reaccustomed to writing (things other than hall passes) on a regular basis, it’s easier for me to branch off onto additional topics. Which is likely a good thing, as long as I can follow through on other strands I’ve started.

In terms of strands, this is a continuation of the core series, with a current focus on the multifidus muscle group, one of the deepest layers of low back muscles. This group of muscles co-contracts with the transverse abdominals in order to stabilize the spine prior to limb movement — limb movement like bending the elbows while pressing back through the heels to lower from plank into chaturanga.

I know I originally said I was going to look at plank variations — and I fully intend to do so in a future post — but then I thought about it. While plank is a standard in a lot of power and vinyasa yoga sequences, the variations I’m thinking about are far less common. Chaturanga, on the other hand, follows high plank on a regular basis, so I probably should discuss how core strength and spinal stability work in this pose.

Like plank, in chaturanga, the core muscles are working against gravity to hold the body in a straight line. Unlike plank, chaturanga can be more difficult — particularly on the upper body — because it doesn’t involve stacking the joints of the wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Additionally, while plank is generally held as a still pose, in practice, chaturanga often involves a controlled lowering into the pose as well as the final position itself.

I’d like to say that when I first started practicing chaturanga, I encountered some uncomfortable joint problems, but that is a lie. When I first started practicing chaturanga, I didn’t have either the upper body or core strength to do it, so I modified with my knees on the ground. After that — when I started gradually incorporating straight line chaturangas into my practice — then I encountered some uncomfortable joint problems. Essentially, my alignment was off, taking the work of the pose out of my muscles and placing it into the joints of my shoulders and wrists.

Sadie Nardini explains the physics better than I can:

To be honest, I was never concerned about the “scooch of shame.” I did, however, appreciate the realization that if the muscles start to get sore, this can be a good thing since it implies strengthening — but if the joints start to get sore, this suggests they’re taking the strain my muscles should be bearing — particularly because this can be applied beyond chaturanga.

Also, FYI — When I was relearning the chaturanga alignment, I did alter my vinyasas for quite a while (maybe 3 months of almost daily practice) while I was exploring this new positioning. Not only did I not lower as far — as Sadie’s video mentioned — but I also stopped jumping back into chaturanga and started stepping back into it again, so I could lower with more awareness and control. It was a good lesson in learning that the “flashiest” version of a pose — or the expression that requires the most strength/flexibility/whatever — is not necessarily the version that deepens the mental or subtle aspects of my practice.

I do not claim that the shape I create is a “textbook” version of chaturanga or one that should be imitated by others. But I can now show you what a fluid, safe, and comfortable (well, the muscles get tired toward the end of my practice, but not the joints) chaturanga looks like on me:

I realize that it looks like I’m lowering my shoulders below my elbows, so that my elbows are going past 90 degrees. I can’t tell if this is due to camera angle (which is not parallel to my body or mat) or because this is what’s actually happening. What I can say is that I practiced for about 90 minutes the day I filmed this — and have continued to practice in this manner for a couple of months afterward — while feeling zero chaturanga stress on either my shoulders or wrists.

Still feel plenty of work in my biceps, thighs, and core though. Speaking of which: for folks who are wanting chaturanga modifications, I will be addressing that next. And I don’t just mean “next time I talk about core again.” I mean the very next time I post.

I don’t want to change my body.

I’ve been doing some reading — namely, pieces like Beauty Schooled’s Why Loving Your Body Won’t Kill You (and related links), The Curvy Nerd’s A Letter to My Future Self, Sasha Paley’s novel Huge (review pending completion), and Shoshie’s Having an openly fat relationship — and I’ve made a discovery that’s profound to me, in navel-gazing, first-world-problems sort of way.

I don’t want to change my body.

This is not to suggest that other people’s choices to lose weight, tone up, or improve the state of their health are ones with which I disagree. I’m all for folks making empowering choices for themselves, and I don’t for a minute expect that everyone else’s good-for-them choices will mirror mine. But as I’m steeped in stories of people who are ultimately on body-changing journeys (for a myriad of reasons, with greater or lesser attachment to the physical results), I’m also realizing none of them are journeys for me.

Because I don’t want to change my body.

I’ll continue practicing asana (among other components of yoga) and running for as long as they serve me — which I hope is decades into the future since I derive a lot of pleasure from both of these activities. And I’ll continue cultivating a healthy relationship with food, where “healthy” includes both my physical and emotional health needs. In short, I’m not going to stop doing anything that’s already working for me.

But I don’t want to change my body.

What I want is to change society’s perceptions about my body.

I want to go clothes shopping and have my size available in a variety of stores — instead of one or sometimes zero. I want to ask a sales associate, “Can I try this on?” while holding a form-fitting dress and not see a sneer. I want to ask about fat athletic wear and not hear anyone laugh.

I want access to medical attention with out fear of a weight lecture, without fear of “just lose weight” offered in lieu of legitimate treatment. And frankly, I’d like people to stop complaining that my weight is driving up insurance premiums. Because I promise, lack of adequate initial treatment due to fat shaming has cost my insurers more dollars than my actual BMI ever has — not to mention what I lose in quality of life.

I want to eat in public without fear of being told I’m doing something bad for me.

I want my body to stop being associated with terms like “lazy,” “unhealthy,” “disgusting,” “pathetic,” and “cow.” Or at least, I want society to equally associate my body with terms like “active,” “healthy,” “attractive,” “admirable,” and “cool.” Moreover, it terrifies me that a lot of people take for granted that an “epidemic of” or “war on” my body is a good thing. I’m not really into using my body as someone else’s metaphor for garbage, pestilence, or annihilation.

Because my body is exactly the size and shape and strength and weight that work for me right now. It’s the part of me that handles all the “survival” stuff when I’m meditative and stuck in my head. It’s the part of me that handles all the “survival” stuff when I’m dissociative and stuck out of my head. It’s the knees that kneel fifty times a day to teach a student one-on-one, the feet that move me through a run, and the core and lungs that power my vinyasa. It’s the lips that kiss my partner good morning and the arms that cuddle my dog good night.

So I don’t want to change my body because it’s not my body that should change.