Oh, The New York Times.

I was concerned about a lot of things in the New York Times' article on why yoga can be oh-so-dangerous. I was concerned about the scary stat that in 2002, forty-six people went to the emergency room for a yoga related injury- I worry that people will think that number is statistically significant. I was concerned that the examples were extreme and outdated (one was from 1972). I was concerned because the Times' concerns were anonymous: "One specialist noted that ligaments — the tough bands of fiber that connect bones or cartilage at a joint — failed to regain their shape once stretched out, raising the risk of strains, sprains and dislocations." Who? When?

The only thing this article needed to feel complete was a picture of people doing bad yoga.  AND looking freaked out.

Now, there are some yamas, some things that, especially for the purposes of avoiding injury, yoga is not, and I think this is a great opportunity to talk about them among ourselves and to the newly yoga'ed. We, as teachers, try to make sure that everybody understands that

a) yoga is not a competitive sport. See that woman on the mat next to you? The one who has the grace of a ballet dancer and the hamstrings of Gumby? No you don't. Because you're not looking at her. You checked your ego at the door, so it's not telling you that you can rest your head on the floor in uttanasana.

b) yoga is not about stretching. Yes, working out kinks in your hips can be a very nice side effect, but yoga is (at least for me and many other practitioners that I know) about breathing through anything, practicing mindfulness, learning to listen to and love your body, and de-cluttering your mind. So are you trying to lay your whole palm on the floor when your body is cold? Nope. You are breathing.

c) yoga is not where you go to tell your body what to do. Using the statistical methodology of the Times, I would say that telling your body what to do when your body is screaming in pain actually does cause injury about 74.38% of the time (66% of statistics are made up on the spot). I can't say it enough: your body is your best teacher. No yoga instructor in front of a class can tell you what only you know. If your body is telling you to stop twisting, are you pushing to impress the betighted yogini in the front? Nay, good sir. You are listening to your spine.

d) yoga is not about ego. I'm sure Glenn Black is a wonderful teacher, but I was confused by much of what he said, including this:

“It’s ego,” he said. “The whole point of yoga is to get rid of ego.” He said he had seen some “pretty gruesome hips.” “One of the biggest teachers in America had zero movement in her hip joints,” Black told me. “The sockets had become so degenerated that she had to have hip replacements.” I asked if she still taught. “Oh, yeah,” Black replied. “There are other yoga teachers that have such bad backs they have to lie down to teach. I’d be so embarrassed.”

Um.

I have to say, it would be a big lesson for my ego to have to teach flat on my back. But if the point is to get rid of the ego, why be embarrassed? Shouldn't we be bringing our experiences to our students to help them in their journey? And that brings us to the next troubling question for us yoga teachers: if we are ashamed to have pushed our bodies to breaking, and we don't share that information with our students, what's to stop them from doing the same thing?

Dear New York Times, the yoga community isn't sniffing disdainfully because you let us know that people get injured in yoga.  Of course they do. We're mostly concerned because it's an article full of old science, outdated human interest stories, irrelevant statistics, and concerning contradictions.  But since many of these things are readily apparent, I guess my biggest concern is that there wasn't anything more exciting for the Times to print.  

Valuing the Important Stuff

This is an odd subject for a new year's first post, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately: what has value, and what that means, and how much we should be paying for it. I'm especially interested in this since I've been working with kids for the last couple of years, and I also teach yoga and flute. I'm going to call those three things intangible. Tangible things like food (although this is another complicated one- I'll save it for another post), clothing, furniture, or something else that you can hold in your hand would fall into the simply divided second category. I know there are better or cleaner ways to divide services, and I'd love to hear them, but I'm going with this for a minute. Please keep in mind that I know next to nothing about economics (but would love to learn), and these are my thoughts based on observation.

I would imagine that tangible things are a little easier to value because you have them in your hand at the end of the day, and maybe even the day after that. If you buy a futon for a hundred bucks off Craigslist, you'll be sitting on that futon for a while. If you sit on it for one hundred days, the value is a dollar a day. If you sit on it for three years, you've only paid nine cents a day. That's one heck of a deal.

If you attend a yoga class, you're looking at a whole different beast. First, buying a yoga class is not the same as purchasing your CL futon because what you acquire can't be sat on, and has to be maintained with more yoga classes. You might buy one class for $16, loosen up your hips a great deal, and think "wow, that was totally worth it." But if you don't continue to go to yoga classes, your hips will tighten right back up, and you might think "well that class didn't do anything for me. It wasn't worth it." On the other hand, intangible things have the ability to change your life in a way that tangible things might not: you continue to purchase yoga classes, you are more in shape, more comfortable with your body, all of your joints work better, you are more at peace. Heck, maybe you sell your futon because you can finally sit comfortably on the floor. And this isn't just about yoga. It's about zumba or pilates, joining a gym, or getting a massage from an experienced bodyworker.

The reason I've been thinking about this so much is actually because of childcare. Is it important to have quality, consistent care for your child? Of course. Is it the case that many people in this country cannot afford good quality childcare? Yes, and I think that's a huge topic for another post. What concerns me is the reality of people who need childcare paying jaw-droppingly little for someone to care for their offspring. I ran across this post on Craigslist the other day:

i am looking for a full time babysitter for my 2month old. the hours would vary weekly but not much. generally there will be two days that the hours would be 7amish - 12ish and the rest of the week would only be until 4ish. Im looking for someone who has experience and has refernces. pay will be $75 a week i will supply diapers and formula. 

Assuming this is a five-day proposition, the provider would be working thirty-seven hours a week for $75. That's $2.14 an hour. (But don't worry: they're supplying the diapers and formula. If you had to shell out for those, it might eclipse your pay altogether.)

I'm assuming a lot of things here- I'm assuming that the poster can afford to pay for childcare at all, for starters. But offering $5.16 under minimum wage (which I'm reasonably sure is not legal) for someone to either transport themselves to your home to care for your infant, or to use their utilities to care for your infant in their own home... it doesn't strike me as being an offer that would attract someone who would be committed to your child. It also has an effect on the childcare provider, regardless of the provider's strong beliefs about childcare or the value of their work- if her work, or his work, is only worth $2.14 an hour, how hard should they be working? Why is their work worth so little? Why are they even doing it?

The dude and I have been discussing this pretty often lately with regard to piano lesson cancellations. He's changed his policies to reflect a lot of these thoughts, along the line that musical instructors are highly qualified, highly trained individuals, and it's troubling when their time, travel, and energy is undervalued.

There are a lot of things to pay for in life. We're faced with a barrage of material things for which we need to shell out every day. I would love to see some attention paid to the insubstantial things that matter- caring for our bodies, caring for our artistic spirit, caring for our next generation. These things are love, for ourselves and for those around us, and they matter. Even though they are intangible, they are central in our lives, and they deserve to be valued.

New Year

I love the arbitrary (Gregorian calendar) date for New Year's Day, and I think whoever came up with that must have really known what they were doing.  I mean, if you think about it, the year is circular, right?  We orbit the sun and it's not like there's a pause or invisible ticker that's like "ding, new year!"  So the date could be whenever.  Wikipedia tells me that England and Wales celebrated on March 25th, up until 1751- that's quite recent, when you think about it.  Sikhs celebrate on March 14th.  In Bali the new year follows the moon cycle, so it's different each year (but usually in March).  It's celebrated with twenty-four hours of fasting and meditation.  In Punjab, they celebrate on April 14th.  Rosh Hashanah is in the fall, and the Muslim new year date varies, but in 2008 there were two celebrations.

But January works pretty well, for me anyway.  It's right in the middle of winter, so right when things are getting pretty dull and bleak, I'm stuck in a rut, and I need a bit of a break, there's the restart button.

And I know it's symbolic, but lots of good and meaningful things are symbolic, and so are lots of things that really matter.  If symbolism gets me off the couch, cool.  If symbolism causes me to re-evaluate, reflect, and set new goals for the next arbitrary chunk of my life, I feel like it's done a pretty great job.  Plus, it's a rare opportunity to give oneself a well-deserved pat on the back for changes and accomplishments made in the previous year.  I love the New Year because it gives me an opportunity to consider what I've done and what I want to do, and design a plan for what I want to do next.

It's also one of those handy year-markers, like birthdays (or Halloween, the winter solstice, or Bastille Day... anything that we celebrate), where you can see a clear line from birth until the present, and every year there's growth and change.

For example, when I was a kid, my new year's resolutions every year were basically this:
1.  Get skinny.
2.  Write in my journal more.
3.  Obtain a kitten.

Now that I look back, that first one is a little problematic coming from an eleven-year-old... but luckily I've experienced some obvious maturation.
1.  Get into a habit of avoiding processed sugars.
2.  Eat more leafy greens.
3.  Cultivate a frequent yoga practice
4.  Spend lots of time with family and the people I love.
5.  Spend lots of time working toward my own goals.
6.  Write in my Blogger more.
7.  Obtain a kitten.

Why I've Been Talking Politics

(This is a long and confusing post with too many ideas.  I'm sorry.)

I have a lot of stuff I want to write about, but I haven't been able to pick a topic for a few days.  I didn't particularly want to write the "Eleventy Things I'm Thankful For" until sometime later, after the holidays are over (although I have many, many things to be thankful for and I'm sure it will be a massive read, so make sure you grab a cup of coffee and probably a snack, just sayin').  Beside that, all that's been on my mind other than living and stuff are issues that could probably be deemed inflammatory, either positively or negatively (depending on your beliefs/political views).  And I didn't know if I wanted to do that, because I didn't really want to put myself out there like that, all saying what I actually think and stuff.

And since I have a tendency to miss the obvious points in my life, it took me three days to realize that really what I should write about is my thoughts on... my thoughts.  How I got there, why I think that, and how come I feel so uncomfortable saying so.

Speaking my mind has been a life-long battle for me for a couple of reasons.  The first is just that I try to be nice, and I guess my definition of nice has never included running others over with my opinion.  The second is that I genuinely believe that everybody has something to say and a right to say it.  If I don't listen to the opinions of others, why should I expect them to listen to me?

I'm re-reading that paragraph.  It makes sense, and I still agree with it.

The problem might just be that in the last several years, I've gotten "listen to others" confused with "don't say anything back," "hide my own opinion," and "as a result, carry around sub-surface, deep-seated doubts about the things that I believe the most."  This might explain why I shrug apologetically when people ask me if I'm a vegetarian, and other similar scenarios.  But the fact remains that I'm in my mid-twenties, and who I am is starting to solidify thusly: I'm a borderline-hippie vegetarian yoga practitioner who is very concerned about environmental impact, arts education, and feminism/the status of women today and in the future.  Phew.  Even writing that makes me uncomfortable.

I don't want to shout my opinions.  I've never felt at ease around people whose voices were so loud that they overshadowed their actions.  Even peaceful and respectful dialogue can end really poorly, especially if you are trying to dialogue with people who aren't so peaceful and respectful.  That can be much worse than just keeping one's mouth shut, in my experience.

But I'm an adult, or at least I pretend to be.  And that means that I need to stand up for myself and learn to do difficult things like advertise my own business prowess and flute playing, and basically figure out how to convince people that I can do all the things I know I can do.  And I thought a good place to start would be a blog.  I'm not shoving it in anybody's face, and nobody has to read it.  Everybody can start conversations in the comments section, and they don't have to stare at my face while I say stuff they may not want to hear.  But I can practice saying the things that are true for me without constant second-guessing, hence my political/personal posts.

So that's that.  I wonder if other people have these thoughts?

Pepper

In grad school, I was involved with the graduate student union.  While I have mixed feelings about unions, I really believed in this one.  The graduate TAs and GAs unionized when they hadn't had a pay raise for over a decade, had no benefits, no health insurance.  They were doing important work for the university, for other students (graduate and undergraduate), and for various branches of learning (including agriculture and the sciences) and weren't able to make ends meet.  At that particular university, the grad students did a third of the teaching and two-thirds of the grading, so it was no wonder they felt that they should be better rewarded for their work.  As an aside, a number of other groups also felt shorted and unionized against the university, including clerical and technical staff, and even a portion of the university faculty.

I was a part of the union the year we were bargaining for a new contract.  While I was sorry that I didn't have the time to be a part of the bargaining team, I turned up for every event that I could manage, including the most awesome one (in my opinion): a grade-in.  The TAs and GAs didn't do anything special or different than usual.  We just took our stacks of grading from our office to the floor of the administrative building.  We spread out our papers on the floor and sat cross-legged and peacefully caused a little bit of gridlock for the administrators who wanted to cut our health insurance and pay, even as they raised university housing by five percent.  And, as a side-note, tuition doubled between 2004 and 2011.  Doubled.


But my point is, I'm a big fan of the peaceful protest.  I believe that there's no better way to educate the people you're trying to change than show them who you are and what you do in a peaceful way- no yelling, no screaming, no throwing liquids of any kind (or solids, for that matter).  I just think that pacifist protest is really the way to get things done.

Then again, when we did our grade-in, we didn't get pepper-sprayed at point blank range by the police.

I don't go to UC Davis, and I've never had any affiliation with them, but I was horrified (as I'm sure many people were) to see a video of seated students and non-students being pepper-sprayed and manhandled by the police.  I thought it was especially ironic that the Chancellor (Linda Katehi) said that camping out on campus was not allowed because it posed a safety issue to students.  I imagine that's true, especially if the students are having their sculls fractured by thrown canisters of tear gas, which actually happened to one protester.

While I have no affiliation with the school, I do have a lot of sympathy for the protesters.  I'm a young, well-educated adult and have consistently struggled to make ends meet since I finished my dual masters.  I have many of the same frustrations as all of the "Occupy" movements, and a big part of me feels like the pepper-spraying and tear-gassing of peaceful protesters is a big fat analogy for the whole reason they're out there protesting in the first place.

I'm not totally finished processing this, but I think I have two hopes for the outcome of this event having been widely broadcast.  The first is that I hope it doesn't deter people from demonstrating their dissatisfaction with a broken system.   If there's anything that we can learn from large-scale, long-term peaceful protesting, it's that it doesn't achieve results overnight.  And secondarily, I hope that it encourages everyone, police or student or otherwise, to practice peace and compassion.  As angry as watching the video made me, it was a good reminder that violence doesn't just come in the form of pepper spray.

Savasana Adjustments

Before I had accumulated any of my (minimal) experience teaching yoga to kids, I would have thought what they liked best was the opportunity to be more bendy, or to take a nap, or to do pairs poses and giggle at each other.  But after teaching kids for a year, I find myself continually surprised that their favorite pose is pretty consistently savasana with some kind of guided meditation.  I have a few ideas why, but I think I need a little more experience and a little more time working consistently with kids to really figure it out.

However, I think one of the reasons is the adjustments.  I had a yoga teacher when I was first starting out who made really fantastic savasana adjustments.  She would grasp a foot, one at a time, with her thumb on the arch of the foot, and pull.  The way she did it, it adjusted the hip and made the legs feel longer and relaxed.  I imagine you could get a similar result from pulling on an ankle, especially since some ankles tend to pop uncomfortably if you put even moderate pressure on them.  In any case, the almost all the kids I've worked with have loved this adjustment - in fact, I can't think of one off the top of my head that hasn't.

The second adjustment is to do essentially the same with the arms.  This can relax tension in the shoulders and neck, and make the arms feel more relaxed.  I'm consistently amazed by how many kids carry tension in their shoulders.  Sometimes I'll see even eight- or nine-year-olds with their shoulders around their ears.  I usually follow this with making sure the palms of their hands are flipped toward the sky and either pulling fingers lightly, or putting light pressure on palms with my thumb.  This is another favorite.  When it's done to me, it makes my hands feel grounded and my fingers seem longer (a nice bonus if you're a musician or teaching musical kiddos).

Adjustments are tricky things.  As yoga teachers, we have to be careful not to cause any injury or pain, which means being hyper-aware of any previous injuries or sore spots.  I'm terrified of making an adjustment that hurts a student.  Because of that, I likely make adjustments less frequently than I should.

That being said, the ever-present yoga student in me looooves adjustments, and there's nothing better than a yoga teacher mindfully helping me to where I need to be.  Yoga in the West is a mind/body fusion (emphasis mostly on the body), and I think it's important because of that for teachers to be aware of how to adjust and not be scared of it.  In the end, I'm still a teacher coming to terms with the student in me that just wants that adjustment. 


Adult students, by the way, also love the savasana adjustment, according to the feedback that I've had from adult classes.  And heck, feedback from myself.  Some days when I couldn't get off the couch to a yoga class for any other reason, the promise of that little bit of extra stretch was enough.

Meet loaf.

I love Jonathan Safran Foer's stuff- "Everything Is Illuminated" was one of those books that leave such a lasting impression that they become a part of you, and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" had me in tears in public.  So when my up-to-date S/O saw that he was writing a non-fiction book about vegetarianism, I was really interested in what he had to say.  And it was a lot.

Vegetarianism is a complex issue.  It's a relatively small choice, sometimes, but it has a huge social ripple.  I think my family was very concerned when I showed up for Thanksgiving and made a broccoli quiche for myself, and I was a little concerned myself.  Foer talks about his grandmother's signature dish, chicken soup, and how important it was to her to feed her children and grandchildren fatty pieces of meat after running from the Nazis and starving for years.  For him to give up her soup, and deprive himself and his son of the stories and family history inherent in eating it, was a very poignant illustration of the issues I'm sure many vegetarians battle (albeit sometimes unconsciously).

When I went veg, it was very important to me not to "make a big deal out of it."  I didn't want to make any family or friends feel the least bit guilty for eating meat, and I didn't want anybody to feel judged.  That's something I still feel strongly about, but it's been difficult to accomplish because the act of me turning down meat sometimes seems to make people uncomfortable about eating it no matter what I say.  Foer confronts that issue head-on too, and discusses frankly the moral and ethical issues that we grow up with concerning eating animals.  Not meat, animals.  As an aside, what an interesting book title.

Think about it: from the time that we're tiny we read the story of the three little pigs.  The wolf wants to eat them.  Why is the wolf bad?  It's in his nature to eat other animals.  But that doesn't matter, because he's going after a living thing and he wants to nom it, and he's bad because of it.  And then we wonder why we have guilt complexes while eating pork chops.

Before reading this book, I ate a lot of fish- not at home, but when I was eating at restaurants.  Because of the points that I can't reiterate eloquently here, I haven't had fish in a couple of months.  I don't want to make any shining proclamations about how long this will last or its universal application (I ate a small amount of meat in France this summer because so many of the issues that made me go veg weren't issues with the meat I was offered there), but having a plant-based diet has become something really important to me, surprisingly so.  I find myself becoming an outspoken advocate of reduced meat consumption more than almost any other issue.

Maybe some other time in a shorter post I'll talk about why I went veg in the first place.  There wasn't any one reason, and it's kind of a complicated story, so I'll leave it for another day.

Anyway, the whole point to this post was that I made this recipe for this vegan loaf that I can eat on my homemade tomato thyme bread.  I wasn't sure about it, as it had a bunch of stuff that I've never cooked with before (like nutritional yeast and vital wheat gluten) (which totally sucks since my friends with gluten allergies can't enjoy :-( ).  But it turned out yummy... it has the texture of sausage (with a hard outside and firm inside) and has a spicy-delicious-salty flavor that I totally want to eat with ketchup and mayo.  And maybe a tomato slice.  On an open-faced sammitch.  And maybe I can put it in the toaster oven.  Drool.  And my wonderful, supportive S/O likes it too.  Victoire.

So then I shamelessly stole said recipe and reposted in the hope that the three people who read this will make it and love it.  And there you go.  This is worth trying out, even if you aren't going the veggie route.