A couple of months ago, I wrote against the healthist attitude displayed by a yoga instructor.
This post is a sort of corollary to that post. I originally thought of writing it for Blogging Against Disablism Day, but it seemed a bit much of the “all about me” kind, which I didn’t think was appropriate for BADD (given that I do not identify as disabled).
To recap, in the post linked above, I mentioned that the yoga instructor had said to a middle-aged woman beside me that “you might as well be dead” as, say, break your hip when you’re old.
He described yoga as his “insurance policy” – to lessen the risk of injury etc. He’s not the only yoga instructor that I’ve heard make this idea explicit.
The instructor’s comments are horrendous for several reasons. One is the obvious: most people would – really, honestly, when it came to the crunch – prefer to be alive (with or without a broken hip) than dead.
Another implication is slightly more subtle: if you are “good” (by doing yoga), you will not get injured; ergo, if you get injured, you must have been bad; ergo, you are responsible for any injuries/disabilities you have; ergo, if you are injured/disabled, you are a bad/less worthy person. There’s a whole lot of blame wrapped up in that one, totally unaware comment.
And, of course, it’s bullshit: in most cases, someone is not responsible for their injuries/disabilities (and even if they were, it would not mean that person was a bad/less worthy person who was better off dead!).
Having said all that, on one level, I do understand where the instructor was coming from with his comment – that is, looking to what he subjectively meant, away from all the cultural implications – which, by the way, I think he should be held responsible for, but the subjective intention is worth unpacking. In any case, I have a horrible suspicion that it’s the healthist part of me that does understand what his subjective intention was. That’s even more of a reason to consider it (ie to allow me to interrogate my healthist self).
I enjoy yoga for what I can make my body do and how it makes me feel. I’m reasonably strong and flexible, and I love testing out new (to me) asanas, or finding out that I can stretch a little more in one I already know. I love the way that, in most asanas, I have to consider what each part of my body is doing (I’m working this, holding that, stretching there, relaxing here – am I still breathing? is my face screwed up?). I love the way my body feels like an entire, single entity. And the fact that it makes me feel whole, harmonised, strong, flexible is what makes it seem like an insurance policy – that feeling induces an idea that you have somehow protected your body against damage. Which is true to some extent, but it’s hardly a complete protection.
What only the good instructors will tell you is that you can injure yourself doing yoga. (Yes, it’s obvious that you can injure yourself doing yoga, but it’s amazing how many people don’t realise it – and how many instructors don’t mention it!) And it’s only the good instructors who will teach you how to work with your body when it is a bit asymmetrical in some way. It’s amazing how off-kilter everything can feel when you have just one little injury. This happened to me recently, and it brought to the fore something that had been floating in my mind for a while: how would I feel about yoga if my body wasn’t “whole” in the eyes of many people? In other words, if I had some kind of physical disability?
I hasten to emphasise that I do not believe that someone with a disability has a body that is any less than “whole”. Obviously, hir body is hir whole body, no matter how different it is compared with mine, in the same way that my body is my whole body, no matter the differences it has compared with yours.
However, yoga is supposed to be all about balance, and one of the ways this is often displayed in a class is that you will end up using a variety of asanas, supposedly chosen to balance each other by using different parts of your body in complementary ways at different times. Some instructors are better at this than others – I walk out of some classes feeling truly balanced, and I walk out of others feeling like something is missing.
During the time I had my minor injury, I experienced that “something missing” feeling much more often than usual.
I think the reason for this is that many instructors appear to interpret the “how to balance” idea as something like: “we used legs in this asana, so we’ll focus on arms here; the back was working in that asana, so we need to get some strength in the core now” and so on. Plus there’s the whole left/right thing – first you do the right side, then you do the same pose with the left. And that’s supposed to add balance, too.
But here’s the thing: that “balanced” feeling shouldn’t be as simple as left/right; legs/arms; back/core; head/feet; etc. It should be about how your body feels balanced, whatever shape your body happens to be. The theoretical balance between left/right; legs/arms; etc should only be a guide.
I think that I was feeling less balanced when I had my (minor, but annoyingly central) injury, and the simplistic attitude to balance that most yoga instructors have just wasn’t working for me in trying to correct that balance. (And again: the lack of balance wasn’t “because I was injured”, as such, but because that injury was causing my body to act/react in a different way to usual.)
Which made me think: how much more difficult would it be for a person who had significantly different abilities between their left and right side, or their legs and arms, or who had a scoliosis, etc?
The reality is, of course, that even in a class of apparently (temporarily) able-bodied students, there will be several with injuries. Even among those without injuries, it’s almost a certainty that a person’s left and right side will have different strength and flexibility. In other words, we’re all inherently lopsided.
Of course, yoga is not for everyone. But I think that if (more) yogis could acknowledge the inherent lopsidedness that exists in humans and work this into their classes, yoga would be more accessible for a much wider range of people.
It might also make some of them consider some of their other healthist ideas. (Better off dead, indeed! Hmph.)
[...] Healthism in yoga [...]
[Here via Hoyden About Town]
You say:”Yes, it’s obvious that you can injure yourself doing yoga, but it’s amazing how many people don’t realise it – and how many instructors don’t mention it!”
There is actually a very dangerous idea circulating in yoga circles and that I have heard from instructors who I have otherwise found to be reasonably good at working with at least minor injuries and imbalances in their students (I do not have major chronic injuries and do not identify as disabled, so I can’t comment on their ability to teach there). The idea is “if you get injured, you weren’t doing yoga.” You may have been in a yoga class, doing asanas, but the fact of the injury means that you weren’t in touch with your mind and body and therefore weren’t doing yoga. I have even seen this used in a yoga magazine to refute Australian (private health insurance) statistics showing that yoga is a fairly high injury activity.
Oh no, it’s only yoga classes, yoga itself is injury free!
It’s a really problematic idea because I have heard it to blame the student for their yoga injury. The acquaintance with body, mood and asana required to accurately assess risk of injury moment to moment in a yoga class is immense. There are also some chronic injuries and disabilities that permanently alter or destroy the ability to read one’s body well and perfect re-learning may not be possible. A student under instruction should not have their injuries used as evidence that they have intrinsically failed at what they were doing.
*goggle*
I’m not “seriously into” yoga (I just really enjoy doing it) so I hadn’t heard that. WOW!
And: grrrr at people who hold those attitudes.
That just makes me love my favourite instructor even more. He’s really good at emphasising that (1) yoga can cause injury and (2) here is how the asana should FEEL (as opposed to look, or what you “should” be able to reach, etc), which I think is a good way to teach people how to be in touch with their bodies, or it’s a good simulacrum of “being totally in touch with your body”, or something. Anyway, I think his way of instruction is the safest I’ve come across.
Thank you for writing this post! I completely agree with you on a lot of the ideas that you’ve mentioned.
I have been practicing yoga for several years now. I used to practice at a studio but now I practice on my own at home (it’s cheaper that way too). One of the reasons I stopped practicing at the studio that I used to go to all the time, apart from the prices skyrocketing, is because I could not stand the bourgeoisie attitudes of so many instructors and the general bourgeoisie atmosphere (I do yoga, therefore I have better karma and am a better person than all you who don’t do yoga).
I also disliked how yoga especially as practiced in studios has become so focused on the body and appearance. People don’t do yoga because they want to get stronger, feel peaceful and rejuvenate. There are a lot of people coming to do yoga expressly because they think it’ll give them flat abs, or help them lose weight instantly. While a consistent yoga practice may do that for some people, yoga is not a practice primarily designed to help people slim down and get a bikini bod.
Thanks feminist2.
I’m lucky in that the gym I go to doesn’t seem to have too many people like that. (That may be that’s because there’s not really a strong community feeling there anyway, by which I mean that I don’t really talk to that many people ;) Probably because it’s a gym that has a lot of good yoga classes, rather than a dedicated yoga studio, which I would imagine would be more community-ish.)
I think you’re right, though, about that common attitude among yoga students – and it’s a shame, really, because it seems to me to filter through to the general world, to the point where there are people who think that yoga isn’t for them because they don’t feel like that in the first place. (Sure, yoga isn’t for everyone, but not for that reason!)
And the prices are part of it. Yoga is so simple. Even the mat is optional, really, and if you want to use props, they can always be improvised. All you really need to pay for is the instructor’s time, which should be the same as for any other class. But there’s this perception that people who want to do yoga “seriously” (or even just “often”, which is the category I’d put myself into, which may involve as high a frequency as “serious” but a quite different attitude ;) ) can and will pay for the privilege, so it’s often more expensive to access than other classes.
I think that fits in quite neatly with the attitudes you’ve described, and both are a crying shame!
Hrmmm. Interesting.
I have a scoliosis. My spine curves off in one direction, twists, and then curves back the other way. The twist is the bit that causes me most problems.
I’ve found my few aborted attempts at yoga to be very frustrating and unfulfilling. I’d never thought that might be connected to my spinal weirdness!
It could be – or it could just be that you don’t like yoga ;) (bizarrely enough, there are people like that! <— making fun of myself here ;) )
I could also be completely wrong in thinking that yoga can/should be accessible to (just about?) anyone, no matter what is going on with their body.
But your comment highlights the accessibility-problem-due-to-price thing (raised by feminist2) for me, too. Because the more a person's body "differs from the norm" (trying to put that as neutrally as possible), the more difficult it might be to try yoga in a big class – and going somewhere you can guarantee small classes tends to increase the price.