Gentle Ferocity

 

When I read Embrace Yoga’s Roots by Susanna Barkataki she talked about how yoga became a resistance to the colonizers.  Being uninformed it was hard to imagine.  How did a bunch of folks sitting around doing meditation and maybe moving their bodies in certain ways create a resistance?  I think I’m starting to get a picture of how after spending some weeks with the wonderful humans in my yoga teacher training cohort (students and faculty).

My experience of yoga has been one of slowing down so I could meet my day/week with intention.  At first, I noticed how I moved about my day with more ease.  Then I noticed something even more fascinating.  I was able to have difficult conversations and deal with some issues.  The impact was powerful.  The method was gentle.  Hence gentle ferocity.

I’m finished the ‘instructor lead’ portion of my yoga teacher training.  I took YTT mostly to learn more about yogic ways of thinking.  It’s only been a couple of months and I am already seeing change in myself.  I worry that being finished the frequent workshops will take my focus away from living yoga.  So I’m writing a blog and committing to share my journey with you both here and on Instagram (and Facebook).

New Year 2023

Photo by Jacqueline Munguía on Unsplash

Happy…. That’s my word for 2023.  I hesitated to choose that word.  It seems bold.  Like this unattainable state of being.  There were so many words I wrote down on my list of possible thoughts I wanted to bring into this year.  Happy seems to encapsulate them.  I want to feel actually alive.  I want to live life with intention.  I want to find peace.  I want to learn new things.  I want to find a way of being spiritual without buying into religious dogma.  I want to eat foods that nourish my body.  I want to move in ways that feel good.

 

Here are some things I am thinking about for this year:

 

-        Find a system to encourage me to do the things that help me stay healthy physically, mentally, and spiritually

-        Get off my phone – which means either getting rid of social media or drastically limiting my engagement

-        READ, you would think with a global pandemic I would have read more but nope, I spent a lot my time on my phone

-        Yoga Teacher Training, I signed up for YTT starting in a couple of weeks.  I’m excited because I think this will help me grow spiritually, physically, and mentally

 

Also I think in the spirit of changing the way I engage online, spending more time blogging makes sense.  This space gives me more room for my thoughts, musings, and wandering.

 

Happy New Year everyone.

Reflections on 2020

The ‘word’ I set for the year was IDGAF (I don’t give a f*ck).  I was articulating my intention to live authentically and do the right things – regardless of what people thought.  A tangible example is taking my  dog Duke for walks.  Duke has fairly pronounced anxiety that comes out like aggression at times.  It is a problem when we go for a walk.  I have spent a lot of time with a trainer working on this.  One day I saw a lady who was walking her reactive dog across the street from mine.  She got right in front of them to stop them from reacting.  I suddenly recalled that’s what I was supposed to do but wasn’t.  The reason – I didn’t want to get between my dog’s

mouth and the other dog (who was across the street so not actually in danger).

Months before, a vet had recommended I walk Duke with a muzzle.  She pointed me towards a really ethical one.  He can pant easily.  I can give him treats.  He can drink if he needs to.  It looks terrible.  It is not subtle.  It’s a soft plastic so he can’t injure himself but it looks like a cage over his face.  I had trained him to let me put it on but I was allowing what people think to stop me from using the muzzle.  That had to end.  And with it, I needed to let go of other people’s expectations.

Little did I know, that 2020 would help me out with letting go of others’ expectations.  Repeated lockdowns have meant that I spent way more time with just Duke and I.  This year has magnified what is important for all of us.  I let a lot of things go.  I stopped wearing makeup.  I proudly put a muzzle on Duke and take him for a walk.  I advocate for myself and speak my mind when needed.  I call out diet culture when I can.  I don’t let what other people might think dictate my actions.

I can’t honestly say that this year was the worst of my life.  I found my power.  I struggled a lot but I got what I needed to walk through it.  In a yoga class (when they were allowed in the summer) I started thinking about power.  I wanted to find my power.  Shortly after that, someone commented to me that something I had done was bad-ass.  I resisted because it didn’t feel bad-ass at the time.  It was gut-wrenching.

In looking for power, I was trying to find a way around the struggle.  I learned that power is IN the struggle.  Continuing to move forward in spite of everything going on is powerful.  Even if much of that time is spent curling up in a ball, there is power in giving yourself what you need.  The ‘bad-ass’ doesn’t come without a struggle.  That’s what I learned in 2020.

Fat

Imagine society labelling you as part of something called the obesity epidemic. 

Imagine your body being unacceptable in every new space you walk into.

Imagine trying for years to lose weight, only to gain it back eventually.

Imagine being looked at as weak, inferior, lacking discipline because of your type of body.

Imagine wedging yourself into an airline seat, trying to make yourself smaller so not to offend the person next to you.

Imagine never seeing a body like yours in advertising – except as a before picture.

Imagine only being able to shop for clothes in one or two stores in a mall.

Imagine only being able to buy shoes at many outlet malls.

Imagine going to the doctor and their only prescription is to lose weight – a prescription that only works 5% of the time.

My body is not an epidemic.  I am not a problem to be solved.  I will not continue to allow the systems that have oppressed me to continue while I silently participate in the madness of diet culture.  Fat phobia is a socially acceptable marginalization of people.  I don’t need to be thin to be healthy.  I don’t need to be thin to be fully whole.