10/11/2021
Those of you that know me know that I’ve been through some heavy trauma in the last few years from an unhealthy relationship. As time went on, my interest in yoga slowly diminished – hard to believe given my complete and utter passion for it. As I learnt more about gender-based violence, I turned my back further to yoga. Why you ask, when yoga assists so much with trauma? Let me tell you why.
In my late 20s I travelled and fell in love with India. I loved its mountains, its food and its spiritual culture. I felt I understood it and I did not question that its culture was embedded in a history of control over women, forceful marriage of women (and in some parts girls), coercion of women and complete control over their future. Somehow I excused all of this and found it offensive when I overheard a western tourist point this out. Afterall this was India’s culture and practices. The culture and practices are so ingrained into this society that the legal system holds little weight in creating change. Bring into this intersectionality and you’ve got yourself a recipe for the highest degree of disadvantage, where women and girls are a burden and a hindrance to food being placed on the table and often a family’s shame, for one reason or another. I mean no disrespect to Indian readers, but the placement of women in Indian society cannot be denied. Yet India is the place that the practice of yoga comes from.
I got into yoga because I loved what it did for my posture, soon I was interested in the hand balances and increasing my flexibility, that’s why I kept returning each week. I was already heavily into meditation so it did little to introduce me to this aspect. However, at 36 weeks of pregnancy with my first child, my leg broke in three parts and I was bound to a wheelchair. I missed Yoga so much.
Once I was weight bearing and with baby in tow, I attended class, took my moon boot off, placed the baby in the corner of the room with toys and off I went to my mat, eagerly practicing my asanas (Sanskrit word for poses). My yoga teacher was so impressed by my commitment and determination to return, she offered me a scholarship to become a yoga teacher. It was a 12 module course, with a minimum 80 hours of community service, a specialist assignment (FYI I was going to go down the path of wheelchair or chair yoga) and I could do it all at my pace. I gave it some thought and I then dove in. I definitely loved it.
I soon learnt that Yoga is a spiritual practice, it is the yolking of the mind and body. The practice of asanas is all about preparing oneself for meditation. It has nothing to do with trying to obtain a lean figure. It’s got nothing to do with stretching but it’s got everything to do with what your mind is thinking while you’re stretching. Yoga teaches the mind to not be too excited or happy and to not be too sad or low. There must at all times be an equilibrium of emotion. This is the goal.
In recent years it dawned on me that yoga had contributed to me accepting my imbalanced place in an unhealthy relationship, and to not only accept it, but to ensure I was not upset about it. The reality of my trauma felt perpetuated by the practice I held so dear to me, and I could no longer reconcile it. I turned my back to it, finally understanding my traumas from gender-based violence, gender inequity, and gender roles that I felt that yoga perpetuated on a micro level with me and on a macro level, with an entire society. This really messed with my head!
We gain weight, we lose weight. We train, we have our lulls. We come and we go. For me, my going away from yoga was a lack of ability to reconcile the practice, with the treatment of women. However, it is just that, a practice. Meditation is a practice. Yoga is a practice. We are not masters of it, there is a reason it is called a practice, we’ll never be perfect at it, we’ll have our struggles with it for one reason or another. I’ve now shared with you the fundamental shift I had about yoga. The slow return to appreciating its benefits, will slowly come in future posts, as I slowly return to yoga.
