A Brick Wall in Yoga: Body Image

Several years ago I was forced to renovate my bathroom due to water damage that had caused rot in the walls and floor. 

It was a completely inconvenient and expensive affair, made even more challenging when we learned that the walls of our house (built in the 1950’s) was in fact insulated with newspaper.

I’m finding myself in a similar predicament right now with my yoga (asana) practice. 

I’m at a place that I can no longer avoid the reality that renovation is not just a good idea, but rather a necessity due to years of a practice that has gotten damaged over time, and may have been built on some faulty precepts to begin with.

This is not easy to admit.  Particularly now, on the 15^th Anniversary of my yoga practice.

It is a realization that came to ahead about 4 months ago when I was sitting in a 5-day Silent Mindfulness Meditation Retreat.  It was Day 3, and I was struggling.

Body sensations were firing left and right. Childhood memories were coming up like a firestorm.  It was rough.

Not because I thought something was wrong or bad about it.  These are all experiences one might understand or even expect when you slow down and enter periods of deep stillness.  I did.

No, what I found most difficult was the growing awareness that I had been viewing my meditation practice as chiefly a mind exercise and my yoga (asana) practice as a principally a body exercise. 

Why was this a problem you ask?

Well, it was not a problem per se, but by limiting and compartmentalizing these two practices into narrow categories of “mind” and “body,” I was effectively doing 3 things:

1.)Short-changing the benefits of both practices.
2.)Missing the forest for the trees in terms of a “yogic” or “yoke” experience of a bidirectional mind and body experience.
3.)Leaving a wide-open door for all of my body-image baggage to sneak its way into my yoga (asana) practice. And, to my dismay, I realized it had.

Of all of them, it is #3 that has me preoccupied the most.  It is #3 that I have been least able to skillfully address.  It is #3 that has led me to avoid my yoga mat for much of the summer, and I feel like I have hit a brick wall in my yoga practice.

Since there is now a whole new sub-community dedicated to the issue of body image in the western yoga world, I know I am not alone in this.

An organization based out of California called The Yoga and Body Image Coalition has been increasing their presence on the internet and in publications like Yoga Journal to remind the yoga community, and those who have felt excluded from the yoga community, that being a yogi has nothing to do with the stereotype one might imagine- namely the middle-upper class, young, white, female who is of course thin.

What’s interesting for me is, when I started practicing yoga 15 years ago, I was that stereotype, and yet all that body image baggage was still as great an obstacle for me internally, as it may have been for others who did not fit the stereotype, externally.

It saddens me and embarrasses me to admit this.

I wish I was happily sharing how far I’ve come.  How much I’ve evolved.  How integrated and whole I’ve become…And in a way, I feel confronted with a word that I have tried--to no avail--to extract from my lexicon: failure.

Of course my reasonable mind can quickly contradict this thought of “failure.” 

Within seconds of the “failure” thought, my psychotherapist hat pops right  on, and I can go off on all the reasons why this new insight is good for me.

A.)It is actually a sign of growth.

B.)Yoga is a “living practice” they say. 

C.)You can’t fail at yoga, it doesn’t even work that way.

And that is true.  I know it’s true, but sometimes it doesn’t feel true.

My son and I recently went to a Yoga Festival together and I heard a yoga teacher ask the question: What is perfect yoga?

It was a rhetorical question, but given that I was currently up against a brick wall in my yoga practice that was based in all kinds of beliefs and narratives about perfection, the teacher’s question hit home for me.

So what has helped?

If you read this blog, then you know I’m a big fan of strategies to help myself (and others too) through the sticky spots of the spiritual life.

Two strategies have been a back to basics renovation of my asana practice and the way I engage with my body.

First, I created a list of what are wholesome intentions for my yoga practice (intentions that are in line with my values and how I interpret the values of yoga to be) and what are unwholesome intentions (most often sub or unconscious intentions) to increase my awareness for when I begin to slip into that habitual area of distorted body-image.

Thus far, the list looks like this:

Wholesome Intentions:

Curiosity, Challenge, Exploring Limits, Investigating, Listening, Opening, Open hearted, Inhabiting, Embodying, Detoxing, Relaxing, Wholeness, Integration, Dropping in, Healing, Self compassion, Reconnecting, Stretching, Devotion, Gratitude, Primitive animal nature, Self love, Investigating, Strengthening.

Unwholesome Intentions:

Perfecting, Sculpting, Altering, Shaming, Blaming, Hating, Pushing, Forcing, If only-ing, Criticizing, Putting down, Labeling, Reconstructing, Personalizing, Goal-directed, Outcome-driven, Painful, Harming, Punishing, Striving, Penance, Punitive.

Second, I’ve created another list (can you tell yet I’m a Type A?!) of some do’s and don’ts that have been helpful to me along the way to break the habits of negative body image thinking and behavior.  They go like this:

Learn to feed your body- what it needs to run on all cylinders.
Learn to stop eating when your body is full.
Water your body throughout the day (like a plant or your dog)
Stand up and move your body for at least 60 seconds every hour on the hour (except when you are sleeping)
 Let your body sleep at nighttime at least 5-9 hours a day.
When possible, put your feet above your head and heart once a day for at least 60 seconds.
Take one conscious breath (in and out) each time you transition from one action/activity to another.
Bathe, brush your teeth and floss regularly.
Do not suck in your belly when you walk by a mirror.
 Do not examine your butt when you walk by a mirror.
Do not criticize your thighs when you walk by a mirror.
 Do not focus solely on your double (triple) chins in a photograph of you.
Do not bury your emotions under a pile of food.
If you have a fever, rest. 
If you have a fever for more than 3 days, go to your doctor.
Do not toxify your liver or kidneys.
Feel the bottoms of your feet when you walk.
Feel your chest move in and out when you breathe.
Do not cover up your butt with long shirts, cardigans and jackets.
Do not underestimate what your body can do by saying “My body can’t do that,” before you have even tried it.
Be curious.
Have a regular physical.
Have a regular gynecological exam.
Have a regular mammogram and breast exam.
Include fruits, vegetables, protein, antioxidants and omegas in your meal plan.
Express gratitude for your body as a whole and with each individual part and organ on a regular basis for all their hard work.
Give direct loving attention to each area of the body on a regular basis with the body scan, massage or a simple prayer.
Take brain breaks before bed by choosing to not engage in problem solving, analyzing, perseverating, or ruminating.
 Engage in movement activities several times a week that allow your ego/mind to take a backseat to your body for a time (e.g. swimming or other exercise, yoga poses, sex, dancing).
 Talk to and about your body with the respect, tenderness and kindness that you would offer a girl or boy of age 9 or 10.
 Occasionally remind yourself of the impermanence of the body- we know how this story will end
Remember that your body is an ally that has been with you since day one, not an enemy.
 Remember that your relationship with your body is just like any other relationship, and to be a healthy relationship it requires regular amounts of compassion, deep listening, kindness, long-term investment, and effort.

The other piece I have found helpful is in the book Heal Thy Self by co-founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program, Saki Santorelli.

In his chapter called “The Soft Body of Your Calling,” he writes:

Oh, servant of the healing arts…Aren’t you searching for the cure too? Aren’t you curled up close, protecting that old interior soreness, that longing for remedy you secretly hope for but hardly dare to admit? Let’s talk about this! How else could you possibly be of help to another? What could have drawn you to this calling if not this reference point, this open inside wound that needs tending?

Look, my friend, we are all wounded. Welcome home! No more hiding! Fragmented and longing, aren’t we all searching for the cure that will restore us to wholeness?...

If language and music are ample evidence of a deeper silence, our wounds and flaws are sure signs of our fundamental completeness. If speech is a finger pointing toward the unspoken, our sense of incompleteness, our fragile, tender vulnerability is a sure sign of our strength.  This tender softness is a portal. We hide it. Call it flaw, never realizing it is the entry point for marvelous possibility. Rumi reminds us of the entryway:

            

            Trust your wound to a Teacher’s surgery.

            Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,

Those flies of your self-protecting feelings,

Your love for what you think is yours.

Let a Teacher wave away the flies

And put a plaster on the wound.

Don’t turn your head. Keep looking

At the bandaged place. That’s where

The Light enters you.

And don’t believe for a moment

That you’re healing yourself.

Mr. Santorelli’s gorgeous language struck such a cord deep inside my soul, that I continue to go back to read it again and again. 

His words (and the poet Rumi’s) have been like poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s phrase “the hands that work on us” for me as I begin, brick by brick, to gently remove this brick wall in myself and in my yoga practice.

What brick walls have you encountered in the spiritual life? What renovations have you had to make to maintain a wholesome spiritual practice?