Cranked, yanked, spanked

Today, on another blog, I read this: "[P]eople sometimes lose faith in their teachers. I wonder if it isn’t more about a loss of faith in one’s self that then gets projected on the teacher. I wonder if that isn’t the root of teacher discontent."

I knew who this was directed to, since I am, at the moment, the poster child for "loss of faith" in teachers, and since this particular blogger recently deleted a comment of mine that questioned the sanity of desperately attempting to go deeper in poses that our bodies (aging bodies, I might add) simply are not meant to go deeper in. I had written that perhaps there is a "wall" at which progress stops, and why fight it?

Deleted. Truth hurts, huh?

Anyway, I would like to address it here.

It's my blog after all, and I would rather expend my words here, than waste them ...well...there. So here goes:

Of course, I can't answer for everybody, but I know why I have lost interest in being "taught" yoga by a yoga teacher (with some exception). It is because I have come to a point in my practice where I totally understand what is going on in my body and where I totally know what my body needs on any given day.

A projection of loss of faith in my SELF?! HA! Not even one bit true. It is the opposite of true.

I am a senior teacher of yoga...of myself. When it comes to teaching me, it doesn't get more senior than this. I am the expert, plain and simple, inside and out. I know what my body needs, what my body tolerates, what feels good and what causes pain. I choose not to have my body cranked and yanked into poses. I choose to honor my body by keeping it safe from harm caused by teachers who think that we WANT our shoulders dislocated and our spines bent the wrong way (newsflash: the thoracic spine is not meant to be bent in the same direction as the lumbar spine). Well, maybe some of you do. But I no longer see the point.

Yeah, see, I don't feel the need to seek approval from a teacher, and I don't need my Intermediate Series "validated" by anyone other than me. God knows, the people who actually matter in my life don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about right about now.

I am not so desperate to prove...I don't know...something...about my body, about myself, about my youth, about wielding control over the aging process...that I have any urge at all to get INJURED on a daily basis. And that is what some people are doing. Injuring themselves daily. Getting cranked, yanked, and, basically, spanked. For WHAT? To come back tomorrow and do it again? To grumble about my feelings of inferiority because I will only ever "graze my toes" in Kapotasana?

My backbends ARE inferior to some of those out there. Hell, they're inferior to many. Halle-fuckin-lujah...I still get to the mat, and I still run, and I still hike, and I still use my body in any way that I desire and any way that I am able. I'm not saving it for the mat. Who gives a rat's ass?

I like to feel good. All I get when I get put into Kapotasana by a teacher is ripped tricep muscles. I'm over it.

YC