{"id":4457,"date":"2014-10-15T07:58:35","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T12:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/?p=4457"},"modified":"2014-10-15T07:58:35","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T12:58:35","slug":"wawadia-update-16-two-ways-of-blocking-the-yoga-injury-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wawadia-update-16-two-ways-of-blocking-the-yoga-injury-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"WAWADIA Update #16: Two Ways of Blocking the Yoga Injury Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/span>\nhere\u2019s no doubt that the focus I\u2019ve chosen for this project<\/a>, the data generated by the interviews, and the analysis I\u2019ve applied to that data so far is triggering for many yoga people.<\/p>\n

I can totally relate: the whole subject was triggering me for years before I began more formal research. I was too professionally invested in asana culture as a teacher, yoga therapist, and community organizer to let myself really hear and absorb the stories of injury\u00a0and harm coming from colleagues. More intimately, I was also heavily identified with yoga asana as a key plot point in the story of my personal awakening. That hasn’t changed, but the story has certainly become more twisty.<\/p>\n

Early on,\u00a0I couldn\u2019t tolerate the cognitive dissonance of considering that the yoga\u00a0I believed had saved me from depression could also be hurting people in avoidable ways, and that maybe it was hurting\u00a0me at times as well. I didn’t want to look at\u00a0how\u00a0yoga culture regularly promotes\u00a0spiritual rationalizations for injuries that result from biomechanical ignorance. Or to consider\u00a0how sometimes we practice asana in order to induce<\/em> pain —\u00a0whether to punish ourselves or to revisit trauma in a new context.<\/p>\n

I did not want the complexity\u00a0of realizing that the precious practice I\u2019d found was something that, after it bestowed\u00a0a pivotal blessing, I could also use to reframe and perpetuate some very neurotic habits. I really didn\u2019t want my\u00a0asana honeymoon to be over, and the long marriage of yoga inquiry to begin.<\/p>\n

To avoid these emotions, I employed a number of cognitive tricks\u00a0both internally and in conversation. My general defensiveness towards\u00a0the yoga injuries of others was smug, defaulting to: “Well, the people who injure themselves\u00a0just don’t get it, do they?” (Of course you can only say this if you deny that you’re also hurting, because then you wouldn’t be “getting it” either.)<\/p>\n

There were two specific mechanisms of that defence:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Redirection and blaming, and<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Dismissal through self-referral.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It took a lot of irritating practice in Non-Violent Communication\u00a0to recognize and shift\u00a0these habits. So I can see them pretty clearly when they rise up in response to the work I’m doing now.<\/p>\n

    (Here’s a picture of Marshall Rosenberg with his hand\u00a0puppets, to give you a sense of how irritating NVC can be. That, and how NVC can be used to maintain power and shut down dissent, is another story.)\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

    R<\/span>\nedirection and blaming<\/strong>\u00a0projects a failure of empathy.\u00a0The redirecting blamer shifts the focus from the complex nature of the yoga\u00a0injury\u00a0to finding a cause for it that exonerates whatever they are trying to protect \u2013 usually a teaching lineage. The subject of the report becomes a scapegoat for the negative feelings her story generates.<\/p>\n

    Example: I present the story of Diane Bruni<\/a>, who tore several\u00a0muscles clean off her hip bone doing a simple forward fold after a year of practicing the advice of her senior teachers to \u201copen her hips\u201d (ironically, to reduce knee pain). Many commenters resonate with the story. But many also shift the focus with their own armchair assessments of whether she was practicing correctly, following good instruction, or whether in her hapless Western ignorance she distorted a traditional teaching, whatever \u201ctraditional\u201d means.<\/p>\n

    Next, the redirecting-blamer tries to attribute the injury-provoking behaviour to presumed qualities in the person they don\u2019t like \u2013 perhaps qualities that strike a nerve of recognition:<\/p>\n

    Diane was too pushy. She was hooked on the intensity of sensation. She didn\u2019t respect the teachings. She had a big ego.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Knowing Diane, I know\u00a0she\u2019d actually agree with some of this. She has in fact described herself as being \u201caddicted\u201d to practice. But the problem with blaming her for that or anything else is that she also describes being immersed in an addictive practice culture<\/em> in which pain was seen as not only inevitable, but a necessary sacrifice. The truth of the matter is that her personal drive to the intense work that eventually tore her hip apart, conditioned by whatever her past holds, found fertile soil and a supportive environment. That\u2019s what the redirector and blamer doesn\u2019t want to look at.<\/p>\n

    To dodge the work of empathy\u00a0effectively, redirecting blamers have to refuse to hear Diane\u2019s story in its own terms. They also have to ignore that she was a leading figure in her lineage, that she had faith in its method, and that she was trying to live its principles to the best of her ability. But more than this: they have to shut down the only response that would really make sense in the situation, given that they cannot know what she was actually doing. They have to shut down the response that is not an answer designed to make them<\/em> feel better. Redirecting blamers will not pause to say \u201cOuch. That sounds like it was really\u00a0painful. And it must have come as a real shock, because you thought you were doing something therapeutic.\u201d They find it hard to hold space for what has happened. They have an impulse to separate themselves from\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

    T<\/span>\nhis may be\u00a0a wee\u00a0digression, but I think it\u2019s worth noting briefly that the blaming reflex reinforces a core mechanism of neoliberal anxiety that some sociologists are calling responsibilism<\/em>. The basic premise goes like this: In an era of mass economic deregulation and employment insecurity, the individual is encouraged by the corporate paradigm to generate\u00a0a sense of hyper-responsibility for health and well-being, and to perform that responsibility through the illusory freedom of consumer choice. Because the state will not take care of you, being a good shopper at Whole Foods might. If you can\u2019t afford to express your freedom that way, you can always work harder. Maybe you can make a little more money on the side by starting a part-time\u00a0personal coaching business!<\/p>\n

    In their astringent takedown of lululemon\u2019s dubious cultural contribution<\/a>, Christine Lavrence and Kristin Lozanski describe this dynamic:<\/p>\n

    Personal responsibility is emphasized [in lulu-land], downplaying the broader social structures that influence health, with the result that well-being is undertaken as a personal ethical project. The healthy body becomes a marker of the responsible, conscientious citizen and is deeply performative, both in that there is a literal preoccupation with enhancing the physical performance of the body through lifestyle interventions and in the display of one\u2019s personal and social responsibility through a fit body.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Ergo: illness or injury or depression can be framed as an personal ethical failure — not a sign that a system needs rebalancing. I bring this\u00a0up because when yoga culture has a redirect-and-blame response to a personal injury story rooted in that very culture, it is mimicking the general decay of collective responsibility, offering but \u201cbuyer beware\u201d logic in consolation. I bring it up because I don\u2019t think there is a yoga culture worth investing in unless it is somehow resisting hyperindividualism instead of reinforcing it.<\/p>\n

    A<\/span>\n\u00a0more generalized version of the redirection\/blame method of trigger-avoidance consists of the knee-jerk response: \u201cIf it injures you, it\u2019s not yoga.\u201d<\/p>\n

    I used to say this a lot, and it was\u00a0thoughtless and cruel. It attacks the integrity and intelligence of so many people who have practiced in good faith. The\u00a0bald fact is that there are many, many yoga practitioners who have been injured by working with mindfulness, according to the instructions they\u2019ve received from sources they believe to be reputable. Plus\u00a0it\u2019s not even close to being factual: there are many streams of yoga that accept pain as a necessary and even desirable mechanism of practice.<\/p>\n

    E<\/span>\nmotional dodge #2: dismissal through self-referral<\/strong>. This is also a failure of empathy, but it feels like it comes more from a defensive narcissism than the need to outsource blame. Here\u2019s how it works.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m going along, working hard to tell stories about people who got injured in yoga. I\u2019m up front about the project, its nature and purpose. I\u2019m not attempting to provide a comprehensive survey of everyone\u2019s experience. I\u2019m focusing on particular stories that seem to be\u00a0typically ignored or repressed. I\u2019m not claiming the stories are representative of a majority experience. I know there\u2019s no data to support that.<\/p>\n

    The self-referring dismisser jumps in and says something like: \u201cI don\u2019t recognize these stories as yoga stories at all. For me, yoga has always been a healthful expression of my divine selfieness.\u201d<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m so glad. But I wasn\u2019t actually writing about you, was I?\u00a0<\/em>I’m writing about the shadow in the selfie.<\/p>\n

    I can understand wanting to pipe up if one feels besieged by stories that are hard to relate to, or that cut so close to the bone one\u00a0wants to push them back. I can understand the political and economic objectives of trying to remind readers that stories about injury may only be a small part of the overall story. But a simple analogy might show how insensitive this can actually be in practice.<\/p>\n

    Imagine that this work wasn\u2019t about yoga injuries, but that I was seeking out and reporting on stories about domestic violence. I would be reporting things as accurately as I could, and trying to analyze the causes and conditions behind battery and assault in the home. There would be so many questions to consider. Why do some people abuse others? What are the gendered and social mechanisms of abuse? Why do some people struggle to leave abusive situations?<\/p>\n

    Imagine then that the\u00a0self-referrer chimes in with \u201cWell that\u2019s not what a loving relationship should be like at all. In my marriage, we cuddle a lot and leave notes in each other\u2019s lunchboxes. We love brunch, long walks on the beach, fine merlot, and all the good things in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Okay. It sounds like you have a loving relationship. But we were talking about domestic violence. Why did you change the subject?<\/em><\/p>\n

    This is all to say: stories about yoga injury can be strange and hard to hear. What I\u2019ve learned so far is that the healing process is helped along first, and perhaps most, by the yoga of listening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Illness or injury or depression are often framed as personal ethical failures — not signs that a system needs rebalancing. When yoga culture has a redirect-and-blame response to a personal injury story rooted in that very culture, it is mimicking the general decay of the notion of collective responsibility, offering nothing but \u201cbuyer beware\u201d logic in consolation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,23,24,1,27,19],"tags":[345,372,373,80],"class_list":["post-4457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-blog","category-featured","category-uncategorized","category-wawadia","category-yoga","tag-diane-bruni","tag-non-violent-communication","tag-responsibilism","tag-yoga-injuries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4457","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=4457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}