{"id":4034,"date":"2014-06-28T09:39:09","date_gmt":"2014-06-28T14:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/?p=4034"},"modified":"2014-06-28T09:39:09","modified_gmt":"2014-06-28T14:39:09","slug":"anything-is-possible-um-no-a-yoga-selfie-blog-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/anything-is-possible-um-no-a-yoga-selfie-blog-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"Anything Is Possible? Um, No. \/\/\/ A Yoga Selfie Blog Fail"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a rule, I try to avoid the low-hanging fruit on the ever-blooming tree of yoga idiocy. But every once in a while my news feed is smeared with\u00a0dreck\u00a0that so astounds me with its orgasmic smugness and contempt for critical thinking that I have two choices: punch back, or gnaw my arm off. And if I gnaw my arm off \u2013 oh no! How will I ever again do one-armed peacock and snap selfies at the same time?<\/p>\n

On Tuesday of this week, the Ashtanga Picture Project published a (unconsciously, I hope) tone-deaf piece of body-shaming\u00a0snark called \u201cThe Myth of the Unattainable Pose\u201d<\/a>, featuring a fine selection of impossibly beautiful Ashtanga\u00a0selfies, some pithy hits from a Pattabhi Jois Quote Generator, and all the reasoning power of a gerbil on a wheel. If\u00a0common sense is prana, this blog is doing some serious retention on the exhale.<\/p>\n

Full disclosure\/caveat\/apology, etc:<\/em>\u00a0My\u00a0critique here is not about the Ashtanga yoga system. I\u2019ve taken about a dozen\u00a0Ashtanga classes in my life. They thrilled me, and hurt me a little in what I then called a “good way”. But it wasn\u2019t my scene. I\u2019ve been friends with many practitioners \u2013 some who have stuck with it, and some who\u2019ve moved on. It is<\/em> true that I\u2019m currently researching\u00a0yoga injuries, and<\/em> I\u2019ve heard many of the harrowing stories you\u2019d expect from AY practitioners, given the rigorous adventure they\u2019ve chosen. And\u00a0while this post does consider the injury\u00a0implications of\u00a0certain APP\u00a0Ashtanga attitudes,\u00a0what I’m writing here is absolutely not a bash at the lineage as a whole, because 1) AY isn\u2019t any single thing to bash (anybody who tries ends up playing Whack-a-Mole) and 2) I know enough to say for sure that the sentiments of APP are not representative of the broader community, which is peopled by some of the smartest and most sensitive thinkers I know. Bottom line is that I’d call this APP post out regardless of its lineage affiliation,\u00a0because this stuff hurts people<\/em>.\u00a0If it had\u00a0just been about the pictures I would’ve given it a pass. But the post doubled down on its\u00a0surface message by spiritualizing a form of\u00a0body-discrimination.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s walk through it. Nugget by nugget, I\u2019m afraid.<\/p>\n

Whenever I hear people talk about poses being unattainable, I ask one question: \u201cHow often do you practice that pose? [sic] 99.9% of the time, this shuts them up, because the answer 99.9% of the time is they don\u2019t practice it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So this raises\u00a0a few questions. Do I need to strap on figure skates and take a ankle-knocking run at a triple salchow to know the triple salchow is unattainable to me and to most human beings? Do I need to streak onto the pitch in Rio and try to tackle Lionel Messi to know I will always suck at footy? Do I need to audition for the next Cirque show to know that a 90\u00b0 extension angle at T1 will really really<\/em> hurt my spine?<\/p>\n

You shut them up all right. A pompous non-sequitur can\u00a0do that. Thing is, the poor souls were talking about themselves<\/em>, about bodies they know and experience and love and get hurt in. Bodies you could be curious about because they are different from yours — differently proportioned, differently flexible, with different effort capacities and pain thresholds.<\/p>\n

This comes up frequently around the topic of instagram. People who are against yoga sefies [sic] on instagram often say, \u201cthe poses shown are unattainable. [sic] If they are unattainable, how was that picture taken? Isn\u2019t that person doing the pose? Doesn\u2019t that technically mean that it is attainable? Just because it is not attainable for you doesn\u2019t mean it is not attainable for others.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ll just ignore the nyah-nyah reasoning here and turn the whole thing around for a tic. Consider this\u00a0culture-jamming yoga selfie featuring what It’s All Yoga Baby<\/a>‘s Roseanne Harvey calls her \u201clumpy butt\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Roseanne Harvey, doing her\u00a0beautiful practice.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Roseanne\u2019s cobra\u00a0isn\u2019t \u201cattainable\u201d for me either. Know why? Because Roseanne and I are diff-er-ent<\/em>. Let it be known that my own butt has some lumps but is mainly scrawny and flaccid by comparison, flattened by way too much sitting, droopy\u00a0with dysfunctional glutes from a bad game of yoga-telephone instructions, which is another story.<\/p>\n

When we talk about \u201cattainability\u201d with regard to elite postures, APP, we\u2019re talking first and foremost about bodily difference<\/em>. Not about will power or practice time, not about strength, not about moral character, not about psychic openness or devotion. We\u2019re not talking about psychological values mis-mapped onto physical prowess. We\u2019re talking about material and structural conditions that \u2013 despite the stories of Hatha magic past and present \u2013 can usually only change in any stable way within a very small margin, influenced heavily by genetics, previous movement patterns, and injuries. I might manage a dropback one day if it ever interested me to try, and if I put in the requisite work: I have the spinal length and shoulder strength\/mobility to maybe make it survivable. But Roseanne may never and probably should never do a drop-back.\u00a0Our differing spines and butts preclude the wisdom of trying to attain each others’ postures.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s into this obvious world of difference that the over-represented bendy-elite selfie enters. Why over-represented? The progressive demands of the AY series mean that like with any other activity defined by physical intelligence applied to the accomplishment of forms, the most photogenic\u00a0practitioners will belong to the predictable spectrum of constitutional body types that can reasonably perform them. In a very brief and unscientific survey of the APP gallery, it looks like only\u00a011\u00a0of the 100\u00a0posted image sets<\/a> feature subjects\u00a0who\u00a0deviate from the vata-pitta standard. (There’s\u00a0one good pic\u00a0of a\u00a0guy\u00a0my age using a strap in janu sirsasana.) The same performance-based selection based on constitution happens in soccer, if you’ve noticed, although the demographic is classic pitta, with Thomas M\u00fcller<\/span>\u00a0and Clint\u00a0Dempsey being among the few more-vata-ish exceptions.<\/p>\n

Ergo,\u00a0the vast majority (89% according to my scan) of Instagr-asanas feature way-above-average joint mobility, way-below-average BMI, way-below-average median age, way-paler-than-global-average skin colour (a separate but related\u00a0issue). This begins to congeal a hegemony of aesthetic expectations not unlike those demanded by\u00a0high fashion modeling. Am I saying the bendy people\u00a0on their runway mats are bad people, self-obsessed\u00a0people, foolish people, people intent on soiling the purity of yoga? I\u2019d be a fool. Who knows who they are? They certainly aren’t to be shamed for their physique or prowess. They’ve certainly worked at things: we just don’t know how much. The bendy didn’t make themselves bendy, or elite. They happened<\/em> to be bendy, which has pros and cons with regard to overall health and functionality, and the culture made<\/em> them elite, which tends to obscure the cons.<\/p>\n

Why this elite-election happens is a mystery of MPY group psychology, which we can start to uncover\u00a0by asking:\u00a0What do the images do, collectively?<\/em>\u00a0How do they privilege the “open” over the “closed”, the mobile over the sturdy? More generally: how do they support or resist the dominant body-shaming culture of inadequacy that yoga might be trying to unravel? And what are we doing to participate in the production and circulation of these images? What are we actually doing, collectively<\/em>? Or is yoga culture too\u00a0individualistic\u00a0for us to really bite\u00a0into that one?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get this straight. Any reasonable critique of the yoga selfie habit isn\u2019t about the character traits of the selfie shooters. If you post a selfie and someone criticizes your \u201cego\u201d or implies you\u2019re narcissistic, they\u2019re full of shit in one major sense \u2013 they don\u2019t know you and can\u2019t grok your intentions through Instagram. So until Google fully perfects the surveillance monostate by releasing the Intentogram app, you\u2019re missing the point when you take the attack personally.<\/p>\n

It’s about the system. If you listen carefully,\u00a0beneath the anti-selfie ad hominem\u00a0you can hear the pain inherent in living in a pornographic spectacle machine running on autopilot, spitting out imagery that some call inspiring but in reality\u00a0excludes and hurts many others. Those who are impacted\u00a0aren\u2019t calling you names\u00a0for aiding and abetting the system, even when\u00a0they sound like they’re calling you names. It\u2019s more likely they\u2019re saying: \u201cOur bodies feel\u00a0disembodied by a tyranny of images that do not reflect the diverse realities of our lives. Please stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know this may be hard, APP, because it seems your site depends on the bendy-elite selfie. Of course you\u2019re free to curate as you wish, but many would ask you to take responsibility for how you shape public space. You are producing cultural artifacts that function as advertisements that sell products, activities, and worldviews. Just like Martha Stewart or Hugh Hefner. These artifacts\u00a0have meanings and effects. They can exclude and harm people. And it\u2019s really no surprise. Taking responsibility for the effects\u00a0of the selfie is no different from dealing with the moral dilemma of driving a car, chanting a mantra that others feel has been stolen from their colonized land, or scarfing down tomatoes that came off an airplane.<\/p>\n

Look at the bright side:\u00a0the APP could be an awesome site if the number of bendy-elite images actually reflected the proportion of bendy-elite practitioners in the general practice population. This would test two things: how dependent is the site on bendy-elite click-bait, and the willingness of stiffies to rise up fearlessly and be seen, despite bumper stickers like these, popping up in boldface as the post continues:<\/p>\n

Body is not stiff, mind is stiff – Pattabhi Jois<\/em><\/p>\n

Body Strong. Mind Weak – Pattabhi Jois<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u00a0really doesn\u2019t help anyone to parrot\u00a0decontextualized aphorisms your late mentor uttered to particular individuals in the intimacy of his\u00a0workplace as if he meant them to be\u00a0universal platitudes. He delivered his teaching in an oral paradigm. Everything he said carries interpersonal nuance, which\u00a0in print should\u00a0be supplied by\u00a0commentary if not caveats. Jois may have had startling insights into the subtle links between emotions and motor nerves, but these quotes are about as nuanced as a meniscus tear on a dude cranking into lotus. Probably better to\u00a0avoid stiff-shaming people with them, or telling\u00a0them they’re\u00a0weak-minded if they can’t do a posture. I mean really.<\/p>\n

The post continues:<\/p>\n

Ashtanga is the yoga of seemingly \u201cunattainable\u201d poses. If you look up any ashtanga yoga chart you will find poses that are mind blowingly difficult. Here are some from the APP.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Insert\u00a0lots of bendy-elite pictures here.]<\/p>\n

But yet, all over the world, Ashtanga practitioners are doing these poses everyday. Why can these people do these seemingly impossible poses? Because they work at them, day in and day out, year after year until they get them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why can\u2019t you do them? Because you or someone else has told you that you can\u2019t and you believed it or simply because you don\u2019t work on them enough.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I imagine this is what it would sound like if Tea Partiers started reading The Secret<\/em> and then got high to sing kirtan. Success rides on work and self-belief! Buckle down! Practice! Loosen your mind! Be the change! Live the dream! You’ll be loving it! Success will be yours! Success has nothing to do with your natal wellness, your build, your nutrition as a child, your early exposure to physical play and sports, your anxiety levels, your injuries, the fact that you haven\u2019t been crushed by a car too badly, or even the leisure time you have to practice something with exactly zero survival value. Consider this: the workers who made the phone that\u2019s taking your selfie don\u2019t have time to do yoga. Even if they did, those\u00a0of them who don’t fit the ideal physical demographic\u00a0won’t likely “get” the postures.<\/p>\n

(I’m waiting for some\u00a0Kazakh\u00a0slave-wage coder and nighttime hacker to figure\u00a0out how to virally stamp every yoga selfie with the caption: \u201cThis image brought to you by someone in pain.\u201d)<\/p>\n

What kind of yoga would it be to be aware of the ethical implications of all<\/em> of our actions? What kind of crucible would that be? Who could bear it? And who\u00a0wants to practice anything less?<\/p>\n

Is the\u00a0APP writer\u00a0aware of\u00a0all this stuff? Prolly not. Did they mean to be so crass? I sincerely doubt it. Do they love practicing AY and feel themselves grow and develop through it? I’m sure they do, and that they’re lovely peoples\u00a0besides. So am I being too harsh on somebody’s innocuous side-project that they lovingly tend? Maybe.<\/p>\n

What I can say for sure is that people get injured in asana when they are encourashamed by unrealistic expectations projected by people who don’t notice or pay attention to difference because if they did they would have to modulate\u00a0their belief in the universal value of whatever they’re selling. So I’m asking for that to stop, please.<\/p>\n

The post winds down by talking\u00a0about David Robson and Kino MacGregor overcoming obstacles. It doesn’t\u00a0say what the obstacles\u00a0were, but I doubt they involved manual labour injuries\u00a0or rheumatoid arthritis. Then it ends with:<\/p>\n

That is what I love about Ashtanga. Anything is possible with work and time.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So not true. But with work and time, empathy is coming.<\/p>\n

Okay. I think I got enough of that out of my system to get back\u00a0to my more objective research. Wish me luck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What I can say for sure is that people get injured in asana when they are encourashamed by unrealistic expectations projected by people who don’t notice or pay attention to difference because if they did they would have to modulate their belief in the universal value of whatever they’re selling. So I’m asking for that to stop, please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,21,23,24,19,28],"tags":[346,50,53,29],"class_list":["post-4034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-articles","category-blog","category-featured","category-yoga","category-yoga-philosophy","tag-ashtanga","tag-yoga","tag-yoga-injury","tag-yoga-selfie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}