Consent Politics in Yoga Practice {Why I Ask Permission To Touch}

Content Warning: This week’s post is about consent and contains frank discussion about sexual assault.

I teach consent-based, body positive, sliding scale yoga. Or at least, I try to. These are the values that I try to uphold in my practice and in my teaching. I’m writing over the next couple weeks about why and how I enact these values.  Stay tuned for thoughts on body positivity and sliding scale classes.

I had planned to talk about consent this week before I knew the Stanford rape case would be all over the headlines, and though my heart is broken for the survivor in that case and all survivors everywhere, I’ve felt encouraged by all of the impassioned conversation about consent, sexual violence, and rape culture happening both on social media and in real life.

As a yoga teacher, the simplest way I enact consent is by always asking for permission to touch my students before I make adjustments. I do this by having everyone rest in Child’s Pose (or some similar posture), and then say something along the lines of, “As we practice today I’ll give a lot of verbal instructions, but I’ll also do some hand-on adjustments. If you’d rather not be physically adjusted, turn your palms to face up now.”

Other ways I practice consent are asking if a student would like to demonstrate a pose rather than volunteering people, allowing students to opt out of partner work, and having students ask each other for consent when we do partner poses.

Ninety percent of the time people consent to be adjusted, and to do partner work, but every now and then, people request not to be touched by me or others. Those few times confirm for me how important it is to ask. Even if no one ever said “No thanks” to physical touch, I would still ask. And here’s why.

1. I have been injured by a physical adjustment from a yoga teacher. It was a non-consensual adjustment given by a teacher I didn’t really know. I’d asked a question after class about Revolved Side Angle,  a pose I have always struggled with. She had me come into the pose, and she wrenched my back around to try to get me deeper into the pose. My shoulders did not comply, and I was in pain for weeks. I never mentioned this to her.

2. I have injured a student by giving a non-consensual physical adjustment about five years ago. I gave a commonplace adjustment to a student in bridge pose. I didn’t know she had issues with her lower back and her knees, and though it wasn’t serious, my adjustment injured her. I was horrified and remorseful when I got the email saying so.

3. I was sexually assaulted in 2006 by an acquaintance I was on a date with. He invited me for dinner at his house. I got drunk on red wine. When it happened, I did not react how I imagined I would. I said no, but I did not scream. I did not run. Instead I lay paralyzed and disbelieving. I never reported the incident. 
 

I am not the only one with this kind of trauma. One in three women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Many of my friends and loved ones have suffered sexual abuse or assault. (It's worth noting that people of a variety of genders, not just women, and particularly trans folks, are at risk of assault.) Add to that all the people who have been injured by yoga adjustments (see the work of Matthew Remski for more on this issue), not to mention all those who have been abused by their yoga teacher/guru. That in itself is reason enough for me to always ask for permission before I touch a student.

But there are deeper reasons that I practice consent. We live in a world that affirms over and over again that men are entitled to women’s bodies and that women’s bodies are constantly available for consumption--to be looked at and to be touched, sexually or otherwise, consenting or not. This is rape culture.*

I long for a world in which women are unafraid. I long for a world in which asking for consent is a given. Fighting back against rape culture is one vital way to take down rape culture. Building new ways of being within the world as it is now is another way. This is why I practice consent.

Here are some ways you can practice consent in your daily life.

• Ask permission before you hug friends and acquaintances rather than assume they want to be hugged.

• Ask your own body if it would like to do the yoga pose rather than force yourself into it.

• Teach children that no one is allowed to touch them without their consent, and that they are not allowed to touch others without consent either.

Want more resources or to share your story?  I’d love to hear from you. And if you like what I write, sign up for weekly blog posts direct to your inbox by clicking here or filling in the form below!

Much love,

Bear

Hide and Seek {Finding "Home Base" in Meditation}

Eight Mississippi...Nine Mississippi....Ten Mississippi....Ready or not, here I come!

I’m crouched in the dark in the bathroom cabinet, my neck craned around the sink basin, my knees crushed against the pipe. I hear my brother’s footsteps enter the bathroom. My pulse quickens. He opens the linen closet. Rustles the shower curtain. I try to breathe as quietly as I can. He exits. When I hear his footsteps disappear down the hall, I pop out like a jack in the box and run to the bunk bed. Home base. I’m safe.

In yoga (and in many meditation practices) we use a home base, a place to which we return to find safety. The three “anchors” in the Vipassana meditation practice are the breath, the sensations in the body, and the sounds around us. These anchors help us to find the present moment by getting us out of the thinking mind and back into the body. We can follow the flow of the breath, or feel our seat on the chair (or the floor), or we can truly listen to the sound of the birds chirping, the fan humming, the cat shifting on the rug.

But most of the time, we are elsewhere, anxiously hiding, waiting to be found out. Can you relate? The mind is always off somewhere else. My mind is usually replaying (and picking apart) the events of the past, or it’s planning for the future. Trying to undo previous catastrophes or prevent future disasters. Even when I don’t feel anxious or worried, my mind is full of thoughts that take me away from home base.

There is nothing inherently wrong with thinking, and in fact, it’s crucial that we think sometimes.  Otherwise how would the groceries get bought, or the novel get written, or the difficult conversation be had. But if we have any agency at all--and I believe we do-- wouldn’t you rather be in the present moment, rather than oscillating back  and forth between the past and the future?

So this then, is the practice. Coming back to the breath over and over again. Noticing when the mind wanders away, and without judgement, coming back to the breath. Coming back to safety. Coming back to home base, where there is no worry or anxiety. There is only this moment, and then this one, and then this one.

Olly-olly-oxen-free.

Much love, 

Bear

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Giving Strangers The Middle Finger

I was biking home the other night from the yoga studio, the route I take home most nights, and I noticed a car parked on the side of the road with his lights still on. I watched the car closely as I passed, and moved slightly into the lane to avoid getting “doored” in case he didn’t see me.

As I passed by, though, I noticed the scowling face of the driver, and his fist raised, middle finger extended, in the universal gesture of “Fuck off.” Who ME? I thought. Who is this guy? Do I know him? I looked around, and there was no one else around, no other car. He was clearly directing this vitriol at me.

As I rolled into the next block I glanced back and he was still shaking his fist at me, middle finger raised. Our eyes locked through the windshield. For a moment I pondered turning around. But for what? To ask him why he was so angry at me? I kept pedaling.

I was shaken. What the actual fuck?, I thought. Who flips off strangers for no reason? I didn’t do anything to this dude. I’ve never seen him before in my life!

And then I thought of this quote by Yogi Bhajan (roughly paraphrased):

When you see that how someone acts towards you is a reflection of their relationship with themselves and not a reflection of your value as a person, there is no need to react.

The Middle Finger Man was clearly in an angry relationship with something. And once I had that thought, I softened towards him. I thought about how my own anger is usually covering up some deep hurt or dark fear. I thought about how grateful I am to have so many tools for dealing with my own anger. And I thought about the times when I, too, have given the middle finger to strangers.

I saw our sameness. I softened.

Of course, I understand how much easier it is to soften towards the Middle Finger Man than it is to soften to your partner, or your mother, or your own broken heart. Thank you, Middle Finger Man, I thought, for giving me a chance to practice compassion.

As I rode home, I whispered out loud my favorite prayer for lovingkindness.

May you be at peace. May your heart remain open. May you open to the light of your own true nature. May you be healed. May you be a source of healing for all beings everywhere.

Much love, 

Bear

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How To Be A Yoga Student

When I was a photography student in college, all of us freshmen had to use the same kind of basic camera and lens, a 35mm film camera with a 50mm fixed focal length lens. This is about as basic a camera as you can get. No fancy features, no bells and whistles.

I loved my first camera, a Pentax K-1000, a small, sturdy camera, a real workhorse, as they say. But I pretty quickly wanted to move on. By second semester I felt impatience creep in.

I jealously watched the sophomores haul around their large-format cameras, big and boxy, with ground glass instead of a viewfinder, and a dark cloth you’d hunch under, Ansel Adams-style. I wanted to shoot with a big camera too, to make prints with luscious detail from a 4x5 negative.

But the program wasn’t structured that way. Before I could get my hands on the expensive, finicky large-format camera, with the expensive, finicky film, I had to learn how to handle my basic little Pentax. But more importantly, I had to learn how to SEE.

Photography requires a great deal of technical acumen, but all the know-how in the world isn’t enough to make a beautiful picture if you don’t have an eye: for detail, for composition, for finding the decisive moment to snap the shutter.

In yoga it’s the same. We come to the practice, and for a while we’re satisfied with Downward Dog and Warrior Two, but pretty quickly we want more! The Instagram yogi trend feeds our obsession with One-Armed Handstand, Flying Pigeon, and Side Plank on the top of a building (guilty as charged.)

circa 2012 (photo credit: Andy Cook)

There’s nothing wrong with these poses, of course, and in fact, practicing “advanced” asanas can be a beautiful tool for self-exploration.  But our fixation on MORE and HARDER poses is damaging to our practice if we’re always rushing to perform riskier poses without first being grounded in the basics.

In photography you need to learn how to see before approaching more complex techniques. In yoga, you must learn to LISTEN.

Ask yourself:  Am I an attentive student, staying engaged and present despite distraction? Can I receive and incorporate individual instruction without defensiveness? Do I heed the cautions of my body when it tells me to back off or slow down? Have I learned how to really listen?

Once you’ve learned to listen, then most poses can be approached safely, because you’ll be paying attention: to the teacher, to your body, to your own inner voice.

Lesson One: Listen deeply.

Much love, 

Bear

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If this is you, you might be a good fit for the next session of LEAPS+BOUNDS: Headstand. This four-week intensive will teach the basics of safely entering, holding, and exiting Headstand. It's gonna be FUN!!! 

Patience and Peonies

Hello dear ones,

I was in my kitchen recently, the French doors ajar, the weather perfect, working at my “standing desk” (really my laptop on the counter stacked on three yoga blocks with a wireless keyboard.) A vase of peonies stood on the counter beside me. As I worked over the course of several hours, I occasionally heard the faintest POP as a petal of a peony unfurled. The other flowers bobbled lightly on their stems.

Peonies look like fuchsia golf balls at first, tightly bound, but over a day or so, they spring into grapefruit sized blooms, frilly and wide open. Getting to see them expand their layers feels like a tiny miracle. All of their potential is squeezed inside a bud an eighth of their eventual size.

Peonies are closed until they’re open. They are working, silently, diligently, to peel back the layers of themselves until POP. In one swift moment, everything changes.

This happens in the yoga practice. For years I thought, my heels will never touch the floor in down dog. For years, my heels seemed to hover an inch or so above the floor, the tension in my hamstrings and calves just a little too much to allow them to touch down. Until one day, they did. Nothing drastic changed between one day and next, just consistent, incremental effort over time.

They simply weren’t ready, until they were.

In 1927 in Australia there was an experiment in which scientists poured hot tar pitch into a funnel, and then waited to see what would happen. Eight years later, the first drop fell. The experiment is ongoing, and so far, there have been 9 drops, at about one drop every 10 years. No one has ever seen a drop fall.

Be patient.

You are always unfolding.

There is no such thing as stuck. There is only unfurling at a slower pace than is visible to the naked eye.

Much love,

Bear

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You might also like to read about yoga and...EMPATHY,  BEING AN ADULT, GETTING SHIT DONE, and SOCIAL JUSTICE. 

The Second Arrow #howyogaworks

I’m late and pedaling furiously on my bike to get somewhere.

My heart pounds and my mind races, berating myself for being late, again.

I finally arrive, irritated, dejected, and breathless.

This was me all the time a few years ago, but my yoga practice has shown me there had to be a better way. Could I bike quickly without rushing? Could I be late for an appointment without self-flagellating all the way there?

This impatience and irritability is like “the second arrow,” a Buddhist concept that says that we cause ourselves more suffering by lamenting about the way things are. We get shot by a circumstance we can’t control: that’s the first arrow. Then instead of shooting out, where it may have some efficacy, we turn our weapons around on ourselves: that’s the second arrow.

Is this metaphor clear? The first arrow (I'm late for my appointment) is a situation I can’t control.  Yes, I could do better with time management to prevent this situation in the first place, but once I'm pedaling furiously, there's no changing the circumstance. I can't set the clock back ten minutes. 

The second arrow is when I get angry and impatient with myself. I suffer mentally and emotionally, and that’s the second arrow.

We may not be able to change the circumstances, but we can change how we react to them.

Being late is the first arrow. Berating myself for my untimely habits is the second.

And it turns out, I can go fast without suffering! I can bike quickly but breathe slowly. I can imagine that I’m a kid again, flying like the wind, carefree and joyful. Going quickly can be exhilarating instead of exhausting.  

The second arrow is optional. 

Look around this week. Where are you shooting yourself twice? Can you accept things as they are? Would you suffer less if you did?

Much love,

Bear

Hopelessly Flawed {Why I Tell Lies, Part Four}

Hello dear ones,

I spent the last three weeks telling you about how I’m liar-liar-pants-on-fire--or rather, how I wasn’t one for 40 days. The most common response I’ve gotten about these last three posts from students, friends, and readers has been how much people appreciated the fact that I went public about my daily fibs.

“When I saw your post my first thought was, Nah, I don’t lie. But then I read it and thought, Oh, actually, yeah I do. And then I thought, ‘I can’t believe she’s talking about that.’”

“I loved what you had to say today, but notice that I’m not jumping up to tell everybody all my bad habits. Nope, I’ll just leave that to you.”

I tell you this not to toot my own horn, but to bring up something larger, more complicated, and potentially more important. The resounding refrain was that it is meaningful to people to hear me talk about my flaws in a concrete, outright way. It is apparently pretty refreshing to hear me describe the particular ways that I am effing things up.

We might have a problem with untruthfulness, but we definitely have a problem with vulnerability. We are afraid of our flaws.

I know you don’t buy into the perfect, edited versions of other people’s lives that social media shows us, where every eyelash is precisely curled and we’re all on perpetual beach vacation. But isn’t this pretty much what we do in daily life? Most of the time we run around presenting the badly photoshopped version of ourselves to the world, the self that is hoarding all our issues and problems, holding them close so no one else can see.

This isn’t an RSVP to the pity party. On the contrary, this is about the life that’s waiting for you when you start showing up as your imperfect, unedited self. It is terrifying as hell to live truthfully as your whole, deeply wounded, figuring-it-out-as-you-go-along self. But it is also wildly empowering.

Show up as the liar who’s learning to speak truth, or the jaded artist who wants to be less cynical, or the intense type-A perfectionist who is trying to loosen up. Own the fact that you have a hard time getting out of bed sometimes. Say out loud that you’re struggling to pay rent, or quit drinking, or heal your broken heart.

Tell the truth about who you are right now, today. That is a radical act.

Much love,

Bear

Why I Tell Lies, Part 3 {Practicing Satya}

Hello dear ones,

This is the third in a series of posts about cultivating Satya, the yogic concept of truthfulness. I “gave up” lying for the 40 days of Lent, and I noticed myself lying in three scenarios: for expediency, out of embarrassment, and when I don’t know what the truth is. When I don’t know the truth, I blurt out a lie instead of saying “I don’t know.”

Sometimes I’ll answer with what I assume is the truth, or what I can guess that the truth might be, or what I wish was true. But if I were being really honest, I simply don’t know. The real kicker is that when I pretend that I already know, I close myself off from learning. I must first admit that I don’t know in order to gain any new knowledge.

I think this tendency has been around in me for a long while. I had a reputation as a know-it-all when I was younger. I worked hard to make sure I was rarely in a position where I might have to admit not knowing something, to myself or anyone else. I’ve done a whole lot of self-reflection in this regard and have (hopefully) improved over time, and yet, I still lie about it.

It takes a humble heart to admit that you don’t know everything.

In my role as a yoga teacher particularly (where I show up as my best self), I now have the humility to say that I don’t have an answer. When a student asks a question I’m not sure of, I say, “I’ll look that up,” or “I’ll ask my teacher.” This has taken practice, and is a continual work in progress.

Watch yourself this week and notice when you default to guesses or assumptions. Do you have some resistance to admitting what you don’t know? Practice humility instead, and see if that makes space to learn something new.

Much love,

Bear

Why I Tell Lies, Part 2 {Practicing Satya}

Hello dear ones,

For Lent I gave up lying. I had become aware of myself telling lies over the past few months.  While it would be easy to brush them aside as simply little white lies, lying gave me that undeniable internal hiss of being out of alignment with myself.

You know that feeling when you step out of your integrity, or when you momentarily waver off course? I had been noticing it more often, which thankfully, I can attribute to an increased awareness more than an increase in untruthfulness.

The Yoga Sutras say that when you become aligned with truthfulness, everything you say comes true.

I noticed three main reasons why I lie, the first of which is for expediency, which I addressed last week. The second trend I noticed in my untruthful habits was resorting to lying when I feel embarrassed.

This one is pretty straightforward: I lie when I am ashamed of what the truth is. In order to protect myself from feeling ashamed in the presence of someone else, I hide the truth so that I only have to feel ashamed in front of me. This is not a very effective tactic, because turns out, shame feels pretty crappy even for an audience of one, and shame has a tendency to show up for the even smallest offenses.

For example, I apparently have some shame about my sleeping habits. I’m a night owl, often staying up til 2 am and sleeping until 10am. (Or up til 3 and sleeping til 11, if I was being really honest. I just made myself type that because I found myself lying again. Like, oh god, will everyone judge me if they know I stay up until 3 am? I’m a work-in-progress.)

I am ashamed of this fact on some level, because I often lie to my partner about what time I went to sleep or woke up. He’s the only person who ever really asks about it, and there is truly no reason why he would judge me about it.

And yet, when he says, “How’d you sleep? What time did you get up?” I often feel impelled to say, “Oh I went to bed at midnight and got up at 8.”  I also noticed that I would sometimes even lie just a tiny bit, “I went to bed at 2 and got up at 10,” I would say, when the truth was I went to bed at 2:30 and slept til 10:45.

The antidote to shame is vulnerability. (Props to Brene Brown.)  Over the course of the last 40 days, I had many opportunities to face the truth, to say honestly, “I went to sleep at 3:15 and I slept until 11,” and to face, not my lover’s scorn (which of course does not exist) but my own derision. There is vulnerability, and with it, the opportunity to meet myself with acceptance and compassion.

Look around this week for the ways that you are lying because of shame. Can you choose instead to step vulnerably towards the truth?

Much love,

Bear

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Why I Tell Lies, Part 1 {Practicing Satya}

Hello dear ones,

For Lent I gave up lying. Now, I was never a particularly pathological liar, but I once I started paying attention I did find myself lying daily. You might too if you started looking for it. There are ten practices for ethical living laid out in the Yoga Sutras, and satya, translated as truthfulness, is number two, second only to non-violence.

I noticed three main reasons why I lie, which I’ll talk about over the coming weeks. The first is for expediency, as in, I lie when it takes too long to tell the truth. So instead of giving all the details in a story, I’ll just condense everything into something much shorter but slightly less true.

And at first I thought that maybe this doesn’t matter. What’s the big deal? Isn’t that just a technicality? But rather than argue about whether this matters or not, I decided to dig deeper and identify where this habit came from.

As far as I can tell, lying for expediency relates to two things. One, a lack of patience, which comes from two, a sense of lack of time. As in, I feel like I don’t have enough time, so I get impatient and start telling lies.

So in response to this, I’ve been cultivating patience, and a sense of abundance when it comes to time. I’ve been slowing down, and really noticing when I’m rushing, when I can’t bother to tell the whole story.

And then I ask myself, is it true that I don’t have enough time? What will I lose if I stop and tell the whole truth, or tell the whole story? And more importantly, what might I lose if I rush away after spouting a half-truth?

This week look for the places where you are impatient, where you feel like you don’t have enough time, and look for the ways that you’re cheating yourself out of a whole experience. Can you cultivate a sense of abundance? Can you slow it all down?

And if you like what I write, sign up for weekly blog posts direct to your inbox by clicking here or filling in the form below!

Much love,

Bear