That's right. Just like entrenching myself in a hippie environment of garden people, community dogooders and organic food eaters, I am totally fed up with yogis.
I was looking for inspiration in my practise and teaching, so I decided to extend my mind and get out to some studios I was unwilling to visit previously. Watching an online yoga class with Kira Ryder, she blatantly said to her class "inspiration has to come from withIN, that's why they don't call it expiration." Thanks Kira. I'm still a little uninspired, but I think it's more an apathy to other yogis and studios, rather than uninspired. I still practise. In fact, my weekend jogs that end in a park to do asana are fantabulous still. So I needed to try to find external inspiration to realize I am inspired.
The byproduct of this lesson was to find deep flaws not only in my fellow yoga teachers, but even a massage therapist I visited. Ouch, it was a horrible massage, full of the same bullshit dogmatic crap that the yogis are spewing these days. Talking about realigning spines, "releasing" bones (I am not even sure what they mean when they say release muscles either, especially when that muscle feels exactly the same).
It all comes down to this "teacher" idea. The massage therapist wanted to talk shop with me, knowing I teach yoga. And the yogis who taught my class wanted to teach us about our bodies. Except. They were wrong. Their anatomical understanding was top-notch with terms like piriformis, sacral, extension, you name it. In other words, the same stuff I learned in Anatomy and Physiology. However. Both the yogis and the therapists seem to think that they know better what is good for me than I know what is good for me. The question "does this feel good?" is NOT an anatomical one, unless you don't know how to help someone feel the butt stretch. Then you need to isolate certain muscles, twist here, turn there, and viola, that person finds the same feeling the others are feeling. But instead, I get these over-arching themes of what must be good for the teacher is good for the student. Huh? When did yoga stray away from experimentation?
Paul Grilley talks about experimentation, he talks about teachers feeling insecure and using "alignment" to control their classes, so it's not a chaotic all-for-one. He's right. He also says that the most forgiveable sin is that of not understanding anatomy. Yes, but in the meantime, where can I go for yoga!? Oh, guess I have to do it all myself? Oh, I guess so.
My issue is then that I want like-minded yinsters to practise with. Not that I only do yin, I need some strength in my practise, as Paul would also prescribe, sometimes. But a 90 minute class, heated, full of pushups and vinyasas just seems like overkill.
I would rather now find some hippies to practise with, those who truly won't judge me for (god forbid) NOT bringing my shoulders away from my ears in Warrior pose. damn, it helps to reduce compression to shrug the shoulders, nevermind expanding the inhale by lifting that wittle lobe of the lung that hangs off the end of the collar bone. Yumm. More so, I want someone to teach my mom beginner yoga so that she doesn't quit (she has stopped going in this the 3rd week) because of some naive teacher telling her to do this, do that, then telling her she is close-minded if she doesn't. Therefore mom is going for a massage tomorrow for a weeklong neck pain. Caused by plough. Which isn't for everyone. Like my mom.
They say "do what you can" but when you do, where is the open-mindedness? Where is the compassion for your students? Enough with crowd control, let a 55 year old take a beginner yoga class without punishing her or belittling her. I'm ashamed to belong to this type of yoga world.
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