COMING HOME TO THE BODY:
CAN YOGA HELP OR HINDER?
Linda Sparrowe
Years ago, as part of a special promotion, a few of us donned Capezio outfits that left little to the imagination, performed 15-minute yoga demonstrations in the fitness section of Macy’s, and then spoke to a small band of curious onlookers about the benefits of what we kept calling “this amazing practice.” At the end of the talk, a woman came up to me, with two of her friends in tow, and said, “So, what do you think? Twenty? Maybe thirty?” I had no idea what she meant. “Twenty, maybe thirty what?” I asked. “Pounds,” she said. “How many pounds do I need to lose before I sign up for yoga?” When I told her that no one had to lose anything to go to a yoga class, the woman looked at me and said, “Yeah, right. I’m going to put clothes like yours over thighs like mine and walk into a room full of beautiful bodies. Why? So I can feel worse about myself? No, thanks.” Her friends nodded knowingly and nothing we said could convince them otherwise.
Bastardizing the Practice
These ladies had a point. Why indeed? Although that conversation took place many years ago, and I haven’t been in a body-hugging Capezio outfit since, I still think of them from time to time and wonder if they ever set foot in a yoga class. I like to think they did and that they enjoyed it. I certainly want to believe that yoga offers a more conscious and inclusive experience than it did back then, but I’m not sure it does. Yoga has long evolved to meet the needs of the culture it serves, and unfortunately it’s currently serving a culture that equates thin and young with healthy and perfect. As a result, many yoga classes overemphasize the physical and attract students who already have lithe, athletic bodies. So, not surprisingly, those who don’t fit that narrow description feel left out. As another of the women wondered, how would doing 60 to 90 minutes of stretchy, bendy, sweaty yoga poses with a bunch of skinny, flexible, young women make her feel any better about her self-described plump, stiff, old body?
How indeed? Now that I’m inching into my 60s, I get it. Just walking into most yoga classes can have a demoralizing effect on anyone who feels self-conscious or ashamed of their body (at last count, at least 90 percent of women polled). But I can’t honestly fault yoga completely, nor do I mean to suggest that all contemporary yoga teachers are interchangeable with aerobics instructors. But the lack of authentic practice in some classes keeps yoga confined to the realm of the get-thin-quick solutions. The sages of old never meant for asana—the postures or poses in yoga—to represent the whole of this spiritual path. But too often they do. And when we practice asana devoid of any meditative aspect, our focus gets stuck on the physical body—usually on those parts we hate—and we lose connection with our breath, our intuition, and our deeper selves. This “bastardization of yoga,” a phrase coined by Melody Moore, PhD, a clinical psychologist in Dallas specializing in treating women with eating disorders, keeps us in a state of being “not enough” and tethered to whatever limitations we deem unacceptable.
Of course, those limitations can be anything. While the majority of women believe they are too fat, others hate looking too old, being too stiff or weak or ugly or … a thousand different “too this or not enough that.” Moore reminded me that teachers have this amazing opportunity to create a safe space for their students to let go of such beliefs. Indeed, as Donna Farhi, a New Zealand–based author and yoga teacher, says, “It is through the teacher’s search for and commitment to her own authenticity that a student gains permission for her innate being to shine forth.”
Moving from Wholeness
Unfortunately, those yoga teachers whose authentic teaching helps others “shine forth” can sometimes get caught up in Western culture’s obsession with (and definition of) physical perfection themselves. Not long ago a friend of mine wrote me, upset that a “famous teacher” whose workshop she had signed up for had misrepresented herself by posting a photo that was at least a couple decades old. If we are really yogis, she said, “we shouldn’t be afraid that someone won’t come to our workshop because we’re not 25 and a size 0.” She found the teacher’s deception appalling and inherently shaming of the aging process for women. When yoga teachers are ashamed of their aging bodies, they send a pretty powerful message to their students that says being young, thin, and hip are all that matters. Instead, they need to present themselves fully—wrinkles, gray hair, laugh lines, and all—and step into exactly who they are: wise and beautiful. I do see how difficult that is in a world where youthful beauty trumps all; to do that, we all need courage, strength, and good role models.
So how do we—students and teachers—move beyond this fixation with the physical body to a place where we can feel better about ourselves? First of all, we need to stop thinking of yoga as something that will make us thinner, younger, and richer. We need to then embrace asana as part of a deeper practice that includes how we treat ourselves and others (the yamas and niyamas), breathing techniques (pranayama), sensory withdrawal (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and liberation (samadhi). Once that happens, we can experience yoga’s benefits on every level of our being—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—and yoga can become a powerful antidote to self-loathing.
I’m not suggesting, of course, that yoga should exclude the physical body and go directly to our more spiritual or ethereal side. Yoga, after all, is a body-based practice, and we can never heal our wounded self-image if we shun the body. We have to agree to be there, get to know ourselves on a musculoskeletal and cellular level. Not always easy, but if you approach yoga with a sense of self-compassion and curiosity, you may find that nothing quite compares to feeling the steadiness of your feet on the floor, knowing that those thighs you’ve hated all your life are actually the perfect size, shape, and strength to hold you up. Those arms that jiggle back at you when you look in the mirror hold you up in a handstand, extend so beautifully in Warrior pose, or allow you to press back into an almost comfortable Downward-Facing Dog for five breaths. For that moment, during those breaths, your relationship with your body changes and your mind forgets its litany of judgmental complaints. Those individual body parts remain the same—they probably still jiggle, shake, and sag—but your experience of them radically changes. Whatever judgments you habitually heap on your body fall away and you move from a sense of wholeness.
Yoga brings the mind and body together in a common goal: to guide us inward and reconnect us to our true nature, our innate goodness. That true nature includes all parts of us—not just the ones we like. The breath, acting as a bridge between the body and mind, creates a partnership that supports our ability to love ourselves and let go of what no longer serves us. In this way, yoga ultimately transforms us. Not in the way a diet plan or exercise program does—yoga doesn’t promise to whittle down the size of your thighs or smooth out your wrinkles. But it can radically change your relationship to those thighs or stop you from obsessing about your neck. In order for that to happen, however, you need to spend some time learning how to appreciate the body you have. The best way I know to do that? Step onto the yoga mat.
Healing the Rift
If you had a falling out with a close friend and wanted to reconcile, how would you do that? Would you spend your time going over all of the horrible things she said to you, reviewing all of her bad qualities in great detail? Probably not. More than likely you would think a little wistfully about the good times you shared, all the times she was there for you, and all the things that made you love her in the first place. In order to patch things up, you would need to see her, talk with her, and maybe renew your commitment to be a kinder, more attentive friend.
Can you do that with your own body? Can you approach it as lovingly as you would your own best friend, regardless of how estranged that relationship had become? Can you use your yoga practice to be a kinder friend—to yourself? Much like a damaged friendship, the more you abuse your body or ignore its needs, the more you suffer. Corrine Wainer, director of YoGirls, an after-school yoga literacy and wellness program in New York City, says yoga helped her become friends with her severely dislocated shoulder recently. While everyone else in class was in Downward-Facing Dog, Corrine had to do Plank pose, and lifting her arms in Warrior I was completely out of the question. She started to feel a little emotional, but realized that by moving slowly and respectfully—and not comparing herself to anyone else—she was honoring what her body needed at that moment to heal.
Yoga allowed Corrine to explore her body from the inside out—not from a preconceived notion of what it should be able to do. She worked with her shoulder tenderly, much like she would with a friend in pain, noticing how it responded to certain movements and discovering what it needed to feel better and ultimately get stronger.
Silencing the Self-Critic
Showing up for your body like Corrine did takes a lot of willpower. Some days will definitely be easier than others. I try to approach my practice from a place of compassionate self-inquiry (what yoga calls svadhyaya), bringing my mind into my body and letting go of outside stimulation. When that happens, I don’t think about my age or the image that stares back at me in the mirror. On my mat, I allow my breath to move me from pose to pose and I feel strong and connected and at peace. But on those days when I can’t seem to do an arm balance to save my life or when I have to come out of a standing pose before everyone else? I feel like I’ve lost my way, and my mind goes right back to its old self-deprecating ways: How can I possibly call myself a yoga teacher when I can’t even do yoga? Am I a sham? And whose tight hip flexors are these anyway? Obviously, switching up a poor self-image takes more than just willpower or hours of vinyasa practice. It takes loving kindness, patience, generosity, and self-reflection without judgment—what Swami Kripalu called the highest form of spiritual practice.
The issues we have with our bodies run deep. In fact, therapists like to say that those issues live in our tissues. The trauma we’ve experienced, the anger or hurt we stuff down, can manifest as anything from a clenched jaw, painful hip, or tight neck muscles to a persistent sense of sadness or free-floating anxiety. If we don’t figure out a way to release our negative emotions, the attendant physical pains could escalate to more serious problems such as self-destructive behaviors (addictions, eating disorders), panic attacks, metabolic syndrome, digestive disorders, or even autoimmune diseases.
To release all that tension in the body, we need to calm the mind. When the mind stops reacting and comes to a place of stillness, the body can too. And of course, as researchers have known for a long time, a restful body and a calm mind reduce stress, which lowers cortisol (stress hormone) levels, balances the nervous system, and heals or prevents stress-related illnesses. Incorporating meditation and pratyahara into your asana practice will help you tune out external distractions that cause the mind to spin out of control and then turn inward. Noticing, softening, and releasing any pain or agitation will allow you to experience a deep-seated sense of calm acceptance. This happened to my friend Robin, which came as a complete surprise to her.
After suffering through years of bulimia as a young woman, Robin had a tenuous relationship, at best, with her body. But she didn’t come to yoga with any idea of changing that. Her motivation was strictly physical. She needed to rehab after knee surgery and her doctor insisted she try yoga. “My leg muscles had atrophied as a result of the surgery,” she said. “I had no choice but to embrace my limitations since the whole reason I began yoga was to increase my leg’s strength and agility.” But a funny thing happened on the way to a stronger leg. Once she accepted that she couldn’t get her knee to the floor in a seated pose and that her leg wobbled in Warrior pose, she found herself accepting other limitations and imperfections. A few months later, she remembered, “I startled myself when I looked in the mirror while getting dressed and thought, ‘Hey, I look pretty darn good.’ I couldn’t remember ever thinking that before, certainly not with any conviction.”
As Robin discovered, yoga puts us in touch with our “pretty darn good” self and helps us see that we actually have a pretty darn perfect self, even with an atrophied leg, a separated shoulder, 30 extra pounds, or a multitude of laugh lines. That can only happen, however, when we engage the mind and the heart and stop obsessing about what we see in the mirror.
Engaging the Mind
Linking the physical practice of asana to the mental/emotional realm through pranayama, pratyahara, and meditation is critical to our healing. While a more mindful yoga practice won’t necessarily get rid of your self-critic, it can point out and even temper the incessant negative chatter that your mind often defaults to. Conscious breathing and mindful awareness move the mind away from external judgments and deeper into the body. I know when I become disconnected to my breath or when my mind goes on one of its judgmental tangents, my body feels abandoned and gets off kilter. Working with the breath, connecting it to asana or simply sitting in meditation, allows me to pause often and listen deeply. In those pauses between the inhale and exhale (especially the pause right after the exhale), sometimes everything coalesces, and in that still moment of acceptance, all negativity melts away.
When I am confronted with thoughts and feelings that play out like a broken record, I have to stop, come back to my body—moving my awareness into my feet or exhaling into my tight hip—and recommit to my basic goodness. This fresh start helps me to replace any blame or shame I feel with a nonjudgmental “isn’t that interesting” mantra.
Even substituting more loving language for your standard invective will make a big difference in how you approach your body and, in turn, how it responds to your care. Simply replacing the thought “I hate my left hip. It’s always so tight. It never does what I want it to” with “I need to give my tight left hip a little more loving attention today. It doesn’t seem very happy right now” makes your body feel love instead of contempt. Switching out negativity for curiosity allows you to silence the inner critic more often and choose self-love instead. If you approach yoga with the intention of learning more about yourself—instead of changing more of yourself—you’ll come to trust your own abilities and discover what’s truly best for you.
Embracing the Love
Recently someone sent me an ad campaign from a soap product. Its tag line read: When did you stop thinking you were beautiful? During the campaign, when faced with getting their picture taken, grown women hid from the camera and young girls clamored to steal the spotlight. That certainly gave me pause. When indeed? When do we stop thinking we’re beautiful? Could it be when we opt to look outside ourselves for validation, comparing ourselves to someone else’s attributes, someone else’s accomplishments, and forget to notice our own? When we lose connection to the deepest part of ourselves, we lose sight of our basic goodness and our inner (and outer) beauty.
So how do we get that connection back? By practicing diligently, showing up for ourselves no matter what—like a good friend does—and letting go of destructive thoughts and behaviors that keep us from happiness. In other words, we need to work hard, listen deeply, and let compassion guide our choices. When a thought surfaces during class (or in your everyday life), ask yourself, “Is this kind? Does this support my intention to love myself?” If not, let it go.
This shift doesn’t happen overnight. I get a little nervous sometimes when I hear teachers tell their students that yoga will radically transform them. I don’t want people to think of yoga as the “big fix” in their lives. What if you don’t feel a shift at first? Does that make you even more of a loser than you think you are? No. Sometimes that shift is subtle. Sometimes a single exhale relieves you of your usual negative thoughts. That’s actually a huge shift, but when you’ve spent a lifetime in a body you despise, you may not even notice it. Even if you do, those negative thoughts (or others) may resurface and you’ll have to replace them with more loving ones again and again.
That’s why they call yoga a practice. The more you experience these exquisite moments of self-love and the more you dwell in delight, the more your negative actions, thoughts, and feelings will begin to dissipate. And as they do, you may find what is left is the body you fell in love with many years ago and you’ve come back home.
Linda Sparrowe is the author of several books on yoga and the former editor of both Yoga International and Yoga Journal. She teaches trauma-sensitive yoga as a way for women to come back home to their bodies and joyfully awaken to their true nature. www.lindasparrowe.com. Author photo by Sarah Forbes Keough.