fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-06-02 11:35 am
some_stars) wrote2011-06-02 11:35 am
yoga: sometimes AWFUL
This was going to be a comment on rydra_wong's wonderful post about exercising while mentally ill, but it became too long. But that's pretty much what it made me think of.
I got an offer on Groupon for a mega-discount on some yoga classes, at a studio I've never been to. So I went to their site, and looked them up on Yelp, and they were really highly reviewed by lots of people talking about how it was a great workout, the instructors were great, etc. On the schedule on their site, they mostly have "beginner" and "all levels" classes; the "gentle yoga" in this review is a special, presumably even more beginner thing once a week. Scrolling through all the 5 star reviews I found a 2-star review:
"I am a beginner--and someone with VERY tight muscles. I have done restorative yoga in Austin before. This review is intended for TRUE beginners who may have some physical challenges.
I tried the gentle yoga class on Wednesday morning. The instructor (Olga) was lovely--but the pace she set and the lack of modifications from the first moment made it impossible for me to finish the class. I ended up nauseated. When I left the room, the owner had arrived on the scene. Her desk manager (who was very kind) asked if there was a class the owner could recommend as I had come out nauseated. I had never had this experience in the Austin studios before. Instead of offering me water (there was no water fountain) or some concern (I was after all struggling with nausea and low blood pressure), the owner said that if I had not practiced in a long time it was normal to feel nauseated. [...] I am looking for a place with compassion for people who are not intending to become yogini. I don't think this is the place unless you are strong already. I must say, I was also unimpressed with the lack of concern that the owner showed."
So obviously this is setting off huge alarm bells for me, having not exercised at all for eight months and with certain Anxieties about exercise, and then I see there's a reply to this review from the owner of the studio--who's been named the best yoga teacher in the city by a couple of magazines, btw:
"It is our mission at Joy Yoga to teach yoga in a way that can positively transform lives by using the postures themselves to teach how to handle challenges without reacting to them, and to connect to the joy and magic of life. We care deeply about everyone who comes in our studio - our regular practioners can and do attest to that. We are truly sorry you had an unpleasant experience and that you weren't able to hear the help we were trying to offer you."
I can't imagine how you could possibly create a more toxic exercise environment than that. Eight classes for twenty dollars isn't NEARLY enough to put up with that kind of thing. Ugh, I just, I hate people like that, I HATE them, and I can't even imagine the kind of public shaming I'd get if I did my usual practice of coming out of poses early or skipping a difficult step in a flow or just taking a break for a minute while class goes on around me. Even when I took tae kwan do twelve years ago they told me to slow down after I greyed out at my first class, that it wasn't good to push myself too hard, and that was a competitive sport.
So I think I will be returning to my old, small, more expensive yoga studio (although without the Groupon deal, it's actually a bit less expensive) where I'm never the only fat person in the room, and the teachers respond to "I have physical limitations" by offering pose modifications without needing to be asked each time, and nobody scolds me for taking a break, and I actually feel like a student and not an extension of the instructor's ego. Oh, and it's simultaneously more spiritual--in a gentle, pretty easy-to-ignore way--but has far less of the pseudo-science "cellular vibrations"/"quantum magic"/"The Secret"/"toxin cleansing" bullshit floating around than the discounted studio seems to have.
("We are truly sorry you weren't able to hear the help we were trying to offer you." WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT. I'd lay good money on these people not believing that depression really exists. Or knee problems. Or a healthy body weight over 150.)
rydra_wong's wonderful post about exercising while mentally ill, but it became too long. But that's pretty much what it made me think of.I got an offer on Groupon for a mega-discount on some yoga classes, at a studio I've never been to. So I went to their site, and looked them up on Yelp, and they were really highly reviewed by lots of people talking about how it was a great workout, the instructors were great, etc. On the schedule on their site, they mostly have "beginner" and "all levels" classes; the "gentle yoga" in this review is a special, presumably even more beginner thing once a week. Scrolling through all the 5 star reviews I found a 2-star review:
"I am a beginner--and someone with VERY tight muscles. I have done restorative yoga in Austin before. This review is intended for TRUE beginners who may have some physical challenges.
I tried the gentle yoga class on Wednesday morning. The instructor (Olga) was lovely--but the pace she set and the lack of modifications from the first moment made it impossible for me to finish the class. I ended up nauseated. When I left the room, the owner had arrived on the scene. Her desk manager (who was very kind) asked if there was a class the owner could recommend as I had come out nauseated. I had never had this experience in the Austin studios before. Instead of offering me water (there was no water fountain) or some concern (I was after all struggling with nausea and low blood pressure), the owner said that if I had not practiced in a long time it was normal to feel nauseated. [...] I am looking for a place with compassion for people who are not intending to become yogini. I don't think this is the place unless you are strong already. I must say, I was also unimpressed with the lack of concern that the owner showed."
So obviously this is setting off huge alarm bells for me, having not exercised at all for eight months and with certain Anxieties about exercise, and then I see there's a reply to this review from the owner of the studio--who's been named the best yoga teacher in the city by a couple of magazines, btw:
"It is our mission at Joy Yoga to teach yoga in a way that can positively transform lives by using the postures themselves to teach how to handle challenges without reacting to them, and to connect to the joy and magic of life. We care deeply about everyone who comes in our studio - our regular practioners can and do attest to that. We are truly sorry you had an unpleasant experience and that you weren't able to hear the help we were trying to offer you."
I can't imagine how you could possibly create a more toxic exercise environment than that. Eight classes for twenty dollars isn't NEARLY enough to put up with that kind of thing. Ugh, I just, I hate people like that, I HATE them, and I can't even imagine the kind of public shaming I'd get if I did my usual practice of coming out of poses early or skipping a difficult step in a flow or just taking a break for a minute while class goes on around me. Even when I took tae kwan do twelve years ago they told me to slow down after I greyed out at my first class, that it wasn't good to push myself too hard, and that was a competitive sport.
So I think I will be returning to my old, small, more expensive yoga studio (although without the Groupon deal, it's actually a bit less expensive) where I'm never the only fat person in the room, and the teachers respond to "I have physical limitations" by offering pose modifications without needing to be asked each time, and nobody scolds me for taking a break, and I actually feel like a student and not an extension of the instructor's ego. Oh, and it's simultaneously more spiritual--in a gentle, pretty easy-to-ignore way--but has far less of the pseudo-science "cellular vibrations"/"quantum magic"/"The Secret"/"toxin cleansing" bullshit floating around than the discounted studio seems to have.
("We are truly sorry you weren't able to hear the help we were trying to offer you." WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT. I'd lay good money on these people not believing that depression really exists. Or knee problems. Or a healthy body weight over 150.)
no subject
AAAAAAAAAAAAH. *runs screaming*
Ick ick ick ick ick.
My top Bad Yoga story involves the teacher who -- after talking at the start of class about how working on the hips and pelvis could bring up trauma issues -- decided that the point when everyone was lying on their backs with their legs spread in the air was a great moment to make jokes about "Imagine being like this when your boyfriend comes home!"
Because, you know, bringing up sexuality when people are in an exposed/vulnerable position couldn't trigger anyone at all. I don't even have triggers related to that, and it still made me uncomfortable as hell. Not to mention presuming heterosexuality, partneredness, etc. etc.
In conclusion: yes, a lot of yoga studios fail massively when it comes to being accessible to people with physical limitations, people who are fat, people with pain issues, people with triggers, or people who are simply not as willowy and lithe and flexible as the standard clientele. And it's not surprising that it makes it extra hard for people with anxiety issues and other assorted forms of crazy to get into it.
I didn't dare go to a yoga class IRL until I had been practicing for years and was feeling confident (after the previously-mentioned five months in the looney bin with nothing else to do) that I might not be able to do anything else but by god I could do yoga.
no subject
But if it had been anything like this--or like the horrible teacher in your anecdote, good GOD, or like everything I've heard about Bikram studios, or full of skinny toned people whose only goal is to stay skinny and toned--I sure as hell wouldn't still be doing it almost ten years later. I get so upset about yoga like that, even though I know a lot of people just want a physical workout and really enjoy the yoga they do, and there's no reason different styles can't coexist, and a bad teacher like the one I saw on Yelp isn't, objectively, any more or less horrifying than a bad teacher of that sort in another activity. But when they turn up in yoga it feels like a betrayal. Yoga's the only group or class-type exercise where I've ever felt completely safe, and I know my situation and issues aren't that unusual, there are other people like me.
(Your Bad Yoga story is horrifying me more than I can express. Just, what, WHY--I can't even unpack how many kinds of awful that is. Because when I'm doing yoga, thinking about the ways my body is on display and all the cultural meanings of that display and myself as a (hetero)sexual object is exactly what I need. It really helps me be in my body without judgment and experience what's happening with the pose.)
no subject
I went to a yoga class once. The woo-woo made me angry, and the instructions about centering and rootedness just made me frustrated (WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?), and trying to mirror the instructor's movements just by watching was predictably impossible, and the poses were all horrifically painful, but the thing that made me decide never to come back was that the moment they had us lie down in corpse pose at the end, my jaw seized up worse than it ever has, badly enough that my lips were still numb thirty minutes later; the only thing that made it start to go away was sitting up and deliberately tensing up all the rest of my muscles again.
And the instructor didn't know what had happened, couldn't speculate, and didn't have any suggestions for how to make it not happen again and didn't seem to care. The other students and the studio staff were all very concerned and solicitous, and also convinced that it had happened because I was wearing (extraordinarily comfortable squishy-soft old) jeans. (Which they had warned me about before the class, and tried to sell me a pair of yoga pants, and hinted that all sorts of dire things might happen if I didn't take them.) The general consensus seemed to be if I came into their (free! beginner-level! trial!) yoga class tense, and never having done yoga before, and without the proper equipment, well, what else could I expect?
Oddly enough, I tried doing yoga on the Wii Fit a couple of years later and liked it a lot, to the point where I'm thinking of getting a Wii of my own so I can do it again. (Trying to learn from DVDs is a no-go; if I'm going to do it at home, I really need the balance board to tell me if I've got it right.) But I don't think anything could get me into a yoga class again.
no subject
no subject
OTOH, I have some stretch jeans cut for climbing (which means they have what is technically and awesomely known as a "diamond crotch"); I can do pretty much any yoga pose I can normally do while wearing them, and I'm occasionally tempted to wear them to a class just to mess with people's heads.
And how jeans are supposed to cause jaw spasms, I have no idea ...
no subject
no subject
how jeans cause jaw spasms
no subject
LOL this is what happens when people want to teach yoga without bothering to grasp the Hindu principles behind it. Because that + "you weren't able to hear the help we were trying to offer you" = BIG PILE OF PIGSHIT.
no subject
The one yoga class I ever took, the instructor was emphatic that if a pose was difficult or painful or if we couldn't hold it for the full length, that we should come out of it early or modify it and that she was happy to provide pose modifications. And the end of class with corpse pose, she said if you weren't comfortable with thinking of nothing, that was fine too -- just think of one particular thing, in that case, or whatever made you most comfortable. Because this was supposed to be for your wellness, right?
That was an exercise class at a community college. If a community college instructor can grasp these concepts, you'd think an actual studio dedicated to yoga could manage it.
I'm just sort of horrified that anyone would -- seriously, how can you be that ravingly horrible? And then BLAMING HER because she clearly wasn't accepting your HIGH AND GRACIOUS HELP? WHAT IS THAT. People like that need to get the hell out of wellness fields because they don't, actually, care a damn about wellness. >:|
no subject
Superdickery. A fine example of a non-apology apology.
Also, that 'the help we were trying to offer you' sounds like they're selling woo. Spirituality is one thing, but woo just gets in the way of actually achieving your goals.
no subject
I love a good yoga studio, which is why I stick to mine like glue. The owner is a sweetheart, and all the instructors are pleasant, thoughtful people who are more interested in students enjoying the class than in some kind of imagined perfection of yoga.
I remember once, one of the instructors was training a new instructor. They stopped at me (I am...not a skinny girl, but I am strong and flexible) and the instructor said "Now, with her, she's very flexible, so you can help her adjust her form or deepen the pose without worrying about hurting her. You can't do that with everyone. You have to know the students." Then he helped her help me adjust my pose and moved on, but it was really illustrative of the attitude of that studio: know the students and their bodies and what you can do to help them without hurting them.
no subject