Category: WAWADIA
WAWADIA Update #8 /// Notes on my Hospitalization
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his post may not seem directly related to yoga injury. I’m including it in this series because it explores a personal experience of what is perhaps the stickiest subject in the yoga injury discussion: how pranic and biomedical visions of the body collide, interact, and may in time come to uneasy resolution.
How far do we trust our intuitive sensibility to reveal our internal states? Is “listening to ourselves” enough? How do we know when we are in pain, and what kind of pain it is? Do insights into sensations described through the ancient language of energy, chakras, “openings” and “blockages” map onto the material reality of the flesh? In what way? How do they lead towards or away from newer kinds of knowledge? When is the yogic paradigm helpful in understanding the material facts of injury, disease, and wellness? When it isn’t, how do we turn to newer sources of knowledge? When we do seek elsewhere, what of these older ways do we bring with us?
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WAWADIA update #7 /// Pain, Performance, and Politics in Yoga: a Conversation with Mike Hoolboom
Out of these pieces, it was left to us to put ourselves back together again in such a way that the cracks would surely show. – Mike Hoolboom
My general policy with the interviews for this project has been to maintain the anonymity of my subjects so that they can speak freely of yoga injury experiences that involve particular teachers and studios without fear of social, professional, or legal reprisal. But some subjects don’t need this protection, either because they are not dependent upon professional yoga culture, or because they are personally able to clear their stories with the people they reference, or because they bring a certain expertise from beyond Yogaland that we both feel would enrich the conversation. And, of course, they have to also want to be on record. My interview with Mike Hoolboom – or his interview of me – fits the bill here. Continue reading “WAWADIA update #7 /// Pain, Performance, and Politics in Yoga: a Conversation with Mike Hoolboom”
WAWADIA update #6 /// “I Was Addicted to Practice”: A Senior Teacher Changes Her Path
My colleague Diane Bruni opened the first What Are We Actually Doing in Asana? event on 5/29 with a personal story of injury, confusion, recovery, and innovation.
Diane taught the very first ashtanga class in Toronto over twenty years ago, and has been a fixture of the yoga scene here ever since. I first walked into her now-famous now-ex-studio in 2005. I saw her name outside, on a rain-soaked poster, next to a class called “Ashtanga Level 2”. I unrolled a borrowed mat in a packed and steamy room.
I was struck not only by her creative intensity, but by the way in which the entire two-and-a-half hours was an immersive ritual of pulsing breath. Nothing was static, no movement was overly-defined. Nobody seemed to know what was coming next, and yet it all seemed to make primal sense. I don’t think I ever heard her use the words “pose” or “posture.” Every instruction pointed towards values like “grace, fluidity, circularity and resilience,” as she recently told Priya Thomas.
Quivering in a pool of blissful/shocked sweat in the dressing room afterwards, I said to a guy covered in mantra tattoos, “So is this ashtanga yoga? I thought that there was a fixed way of doing things.” The guy snapped out his wet towel, folded it neatly, and smiled. “That’s Diane. She knows the ashtanga sequences like no one else. She’s studied with the masters. But now she’s doing her own thing. She knows that yoga means change.” Continue reading “WAWADIA update #6 /// “I Was Addicted to Practice”: A Senior Teacher Changes Her Path”
WAWADIA Update #5 /// “First Do No Harm”: an M.D. on Asana-Related Injuries
Doctors and yoga teachers have the same first principle: Do No Harm. If we do things blindly, and if we don’t mine data, we won’t fulfill that principle. — Dr. Raza Awan
What I love about listening to Dr. Awan talk about yoga injuries is that he has all the relaxation of someone with no conflict of interest. He’s the medical director for Synergy Sports Medicine in Toronto, so he can show up for an intense yoga injuries discussion forum on a Thursday night, drop some data-bombs, and go back to work on Friday morning like nothing happened. Meanwhile, the rest of us yoga teachers wake up wondering what we should do next.
I can say this: he inspires to me move forward as if I have nothing personally at stake in this difficult discussion. But I do. How do I report to the yoga world I’m so invested in, to which I owe my livelihood, and that I spent over a decade teaching in, that several basic staples of asana practice might be definitively unsafe? Continue reading “WAWADIA Update #5 /// “First Do No Harm”: an M.D. on Asana-Related Injuries”
WAWADIA Update #4 /// Emerging Psychosocial Themes in Asana-Related Injuries
Ten days ago, Diane Bruni and I hosted a public event called “What Are We Actually Doing in Asana: an exploration of yoga-related injuries.” There were about seventy people in attendance at Diane’s studio here in Toronto. When Diane asked who had been injured through asana practice, virtually everyone raised their hands. Of course, we get injured doing all sorts of things in daily life. But in the majority of its discourse, yoga holds forth a therapeutic promise that its culture might not be fulfilling. What’s more is that most of those in attendance were teachers, who one might assume to be better versed in avoiding injury than most.
We were joined by Dr. Raza Awan, medical director for Synergy Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation. He gave an overview of the epidemiological research he has begun with the yoga injuries that his clinic has been treating over the last several years. Diane shared a personal account of her 20 years of dedicated practice, and how injury has led to innovation. I nervously presented some preliminary themes from my own research, based so far on over sixty interviews. Kathryn Bruni-Young spoke on her transition from vinyasa-only practice to the more eclectic (and, she claims, healthful) mix of strength and movement disciplines she engages with and teaches today. Continue reading “WAWADIA Update #4 /// Emerging Psychosocial Themes in Asana-Related Injuries”
No Magic to Protect You in “Wild Thing”, And No Magical Way in Which Yoga Changes the World /// Plus We Heart Be Scofield
Nugget: The claim that Wild Thing can be done safely might involve the same wishful/magical thinking as the claim that yoga and meditation will automatically “shift consciousness”, whether individually, communally, or “vibrationally”. Both claims seem to depend upon overlooking concrete material conditions in favour of nurturing faith in vague metaphysical principles. Concrete material conditions demand specific learning objectives. If yogis want to be smart on the biomechanics front, yoga needs physios, osteos, neurologists and kinesiologists. If yogis want to be at all relevant on the cultural front, yoga needs anti-oppression educators and activists.
WAWADIA Update #3 /// “Wild Thing” Pose: Impossible, Injurious, Poignant
Certum est quia impossibile est. — Tertullian
I’m closing in on fifty interviews for this project, and it’s getting richer every week.
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Update #2: What Are We Actually Doing in Asana? \\\ Questions, questions, questions!
About a month and two dozen interviews into this research project and I can honestly say I’ve learned more about how folks experience yoga than I have over the past eleven years of teaching. The stories of pain, injury, recovery, and wisdom keep rolling, each unraveling unique twists of psychology along with the tweaks of tissue. Continue reading “Update #2: What Are We Actually Doing in Asana? \\\ Questions, questions, questions!”
“I am not (what you need from) my body”: expanding on a yoga meme
1. “I am not my body” communicates a felt reality: a review + another possibility
It’s been about five months since I called out Cameron Shayne’s use of the “I am not my body” meme to rationalize his DIY libertarian It’s-Okay-To-Sleep-With-My-Students ethics. It started a rich discussion that gave me a lot to think about, and softened up this critical heart of mine. At least a bit, anyway. Continue reading ““I am not (what you need from) my body”: expanding on a yoga meme”
Update: What Are We Actually Doing in Asana?
I just completed the first week of interviewing for “What Are We Actually Doing in Asana?” As I expected, and resonant with my own experience with asana, I heard stories of re-embodiment and renewed courage. Many experienced relief from chronic pain, both physical and emotional. Many felt that physical yoga practice was integral to the most significant period of personal change in their lives. Some people came to asana as though they were coming home.
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