Yoga

Diane wasn't just practicing "addictively", as she says, in order to self-regulate. Her professional attainments and authority as a teacher depended upon that commitment, and upon her students seeing it in action. So regardless of whether her students practiced as hard as her (and many, including her daughter Kathryn, did), the rigour of Diane's practice was a community ideal. She was in the paradoxical position of performing an intensity that inspired others, including me, but was destroying her tissues. Not only did nobody see the pain that she herself was ignoring, the movements that were causing that pain were actually interpreted by others as beautiful or pleasurable, or both.