In our last episode we talked about trusting your own experience, so in this one we’re taking the conversation into how to remember what’s true for you. This one takes us into my sheroes from my favorite books when I was a kid, yogic concepts of satya and svadhyaya and much more.
I also answer a listener question about how to deal with the hurt that comes from the everyday fatphobia that is so prevalent in our culture.
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Links for you
- Donna Farhi on the Yamas & Niyamas
- “The Show of Delights,” This American Life
- The Kind 29
- Not a member of Curvy Yoga Studio yet? Join us!
- Questions, comments, feedback, ideas? Get in touch: podcast@curvyyoga.com or find me on Instagram @CurvyYoga.
Transcript
(00:05):
[MUSIC].
(00:05):
Welcome to Love, Curvy Yoga, the podcast where we believe a deep breath counts. Now let’s get into it.
(00:17):
Hi, how are you? Anna here. Things here are pretty good. One thing I was noticing this morning when I was doing my practice is how tight my neck and shoulders have been lately. If you are a regular listener to this podcast, you know that that is a recurring theme. So I’ve been spending a lot of time with slow neck stretches and my yoga ball, not the big, the inflatable ones, but more kind of like a tennis ball. And every time I do that I think, why don’t I do this every single day? Not yoga but the ball. And you might think that I would or that I would remember to do it more regularly or more easily. But you know, I am a human just like you and regularly forget the things that are supportive for me. So I am just a yoga teacher standing in front of a yoga ball, asking it to pop up and remind me every day to use it. That is a callback to our last episode when we talked about rom coms. That is for you and Notting Hill fans out there. Okay, so up next, how to remember what’s true
(01:34):
[MUSIC]
(01:38):
Last week we talked about trusting your own experience. So today I wanted to extend that conversation into how you remember what is true because the two of course are inextricable. I was recently having a conversation with somebody and she said, how do you learn to love your body? And I was like, well… And I said, I think it’s best to take love off the table at first because if it feels like too far of a leap, it’s easy to feel like a failure and give up. So she said, well, what do you do instead? And I said, start where you are. And then she said, okay, well wouldn’t you say that’s true about life too? And I said, yes, you can say that about so many things.
(02:30):
When I was a kid, I felt most seen by the girl heroes of my favorite novels. I was a big reader, which I’m sure you do not find surprising. So I loved Harriet of Harriet The spy, Mary in The Secret Garden and Anne of Anne of Green Gables – she was like my number one. Ramona of Ramona Quimby, Claudia from The Mixed Up Files of Ms Basil E. Frankweiler. And what all of these girls had in common was rich interior lives. They knew that a bigger life existed for them and they lived it first in their dreams and their imagination before bringing it into consciousness.
(03:12):
When I went to college, my parents thought I should be an accounting major, so my dad would say they make good money and they always need women. So assured by the practicality of it all, I was like, okay, this seems like a reasonable plan. Until halfway through my first semester when I found myself daydreaming of throwing myself out the window of my future accounting firm. So the very next day I stopped by the English department and switched my major.
(03:44):
You know, some days I feel like I have spent the past, I don’t know, 25 years or more, getting back to what I’ve always known about myself. Other days I think, am I ever going to land there? Where is that place? And how much longer is it going to take me to trust in the landing of that. Over dinner recently I was talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about one of our favorite writers and just how beautifully and it seems like perfectly, she captures what it means to be human. And the friend said, yeah, and she is just a writer. She’s not a life coach or a spiritual leader or anything else. And I thought about that and I said, yeah, she’s a writer, but she does her inner work and tells the truth. And then we were both just silent for a while because it feels like something so simple and yet so complex and powerful at the same time.
(04:54):
In 2015 my word of the year was remember, and I chose it because I had a yoga teacher at the time who talked about a teacher of hers who would discuss the concept of remembering as re-membering. So putting things back together. And I think a lot of times we look all around and outside ourselves for what’s true for us, when really what’s useful is looking inside. And you know, yoga has some really good teachings for us on this concept of truth with the concept of Satya, which is commonly translated as truth. So we find this concept within the eight limbs of yoga in the very first limb, which is the yamas and the yoga teacher Donna Farhi describes the yamas as wise characteristics and I love that translation. So there are five yamas, five wise characteristics, and the second is Satya, which is truth. And of course there are the typical descriptions of this like being truthful with your words. But the part that’s I think most relevant to our conversation is this. And it comes from Donna Farhi. She says, “probably the hardest form of this practice [of satya] is being true to our own heart and inner destiny. Confusion and mistrust of our inner values can make it difficult to know the nature of our heart’s desire. But even when we become clear enough to recognize what truth means for us, we may lack the courage and conviction to live our truth. Following what we know to be essential for our growth may mean leaving unhealthy relationships or jobs and taking risks that jeopardize our own comfortable position. It may mean making choices that are not supported by consensual reality or ratified by the outer culture. The truth is rarely convenient. One way we can know we are living the truth is that while our choices may not be easy, at the end of the day, we feel at peace with ourselves.”
(07:04):
And I think this is really the work that we’re doing here at Curvy Yoga, which is turning toward the body and our inner knowing after so many of us have been told to do the opposite. You know this part she says about your choices not being ratified by the outer culture. I mean, could there be a truer statement about accepting your body? And yet there is something that calls us to this process, this practice, this relationship with our body. It’s why I’m here talking to you. It’s why you’re here listening. And it’s this listening within, not instead of without, but in addition to without. So using the practices of yoga and meditation to hone our ability to really know and honor our own truth.
(08:00):
I was recently listening to an episode of This American Life, which is a podcast that I have loved for many years. And the theme was delight. As you can imagine, I was very excited to listen to it because delight is, uh, something that I find delightful, find to be an important part of life. And in one part of the episode they talk with a woman who co-created a famous podcast. And at the height of that podcast popularity, she became severely depressed. She had to take a medical leave from work and it really took her a while to find her way back. And I know that I said this episode’s about delight. So just hang on a second, here it comes. So this next part, the host of this particular episode was Bim Adewunmi. And she said “in his delight essayette, Bird Feeding, the poet Ross gay witnesses a man feeding a pigeon in the park. Less than 30 seconds later, he watches another bird, a tufted titmouse this time, swoop down into the hand of a different wholly unconnected person. A lovely moment twice over. But he wouldn’t have noticed that second bird, he said, if the first bird hadn’t prepared him to see it. Tracy’s fans [this is the podcast host]Tracy’s fans saw her as their first bird. Not only a delightful person by herself, but also a doorway to more delight. Now she’s figuring out how to be her own first bird, to develop a system to do for herself what had previously come naturally.”
(09:36):
And this is really my wish for all of us, that we become our own first birds through the noticing we develop in the yoga practice, in the body acceptance practice, and that we root even more deeply into what’s true.
(09:53):
Up next: A listener question and a few reminders.
(09:56):
[MUSIC]
(10:04):
Okay, so we have a question that came in from a listener, from Shannon S, thank you for sending this one in. And here is her question. She says, “I’m having a lot of problems dealing with the everyday casual hate against fat people. I know it shouldn’t matter what strangers think, but I hear and witness it so often that it just feels like this socially acceptable way to dehumanize people and it hurts. It especially hurts when I see it in feminist forums and conversations as though they can’t see how objectifying someone based on their weight is just another form of patriarchal oppression and a way to keep women in our place. The statements I hear range from the whole quote unquote unhealthy debate to the idea that fat people are unattractive. I know all the feminist and fat acceptance arguments against this, but those arguments don’t tackle the hurt I feel inside when I see these conversations.”
(11:00):
Ooh, I feel like we all need an exhale after this question because it’s so potent and so relevant. And as I told Shannon when I emailed her to thank her for the question, it’s a tough one and that means it’s an essential one for us to talk about. So I decided to include it in today’s episode because I think it’s really related to what we have just been talking about, namely turning toward the body and what we’re feeling rather than away from it. So I have of course shared many similar experiences to what Shannon shares from casual jokes on television to surprising comments from friends who I thought knew better to, you know, everything in between. And when I really reflected on those experiences, what I notice is that at least in my own personal experience, the first thing that happens is the sting, so that hurt that Shannon described. And then what I do, which is not necessarily what you or anyone else does, is I have an instinct to block that hurt. So I notice myself making internal excuses for the person. I notice myself writing off my own feelings, kind of really like anything to avoid that hurt. But what I have learned over time is that making excuses for my own feelings, dismissing them, is not making things better. It’s really adding hurt upon hurt.
(12:40):
And I think what we talked about earlier is relevant here. So it’s a great time to apply the concept of Satya and acknowledge what’s true, which is the hurt. You know, Shannon talked about knowing all the arguments against it, but the truth of the hurt still being there. So we talked about how yoga and meditation can help you tune into and notice what you’re feeling. And one addition to that conversation to bring in here is noticing what bodily sensations arise. So where do you feel the hurt in your body? What do you notice? What maybe temperature fluctuations do you feel? I know that when I feel hurt, I often will have a uh, like a rush of heat in my body. And then sometimes it goes to cold. And then what, where do you notice tension come into your body? I’m a big jaw gripper, so I will often notice tension there or behind my eyes. What are your instincts? Is it to avoid, to get angry? To dismiss?
(13:50):
You know, none of this is good or bad. What is really happening is noticing because from there it really becomes easier to honor and to shift. And we’re not wanting to shift it to ignore it or get rid of it, but rather to follow the natural process of feelings moving when you stay with them. Of course, you know, actual movement like yoga or dance or whatever can help with this. But it’s also interesting to follow the feeling and see where it takes you because where it goes next, and it does go somewhere next, right? Like this is an important part of the conversation. Where it goes next is also information that you can use to support yourself. So do you go to anger, a different kind of hurt, something else?
(14:37):
You know, all of this is a process of another part of the eight limbs of yoga. This time the niyamas. So that’s the second limb. And let’s just circle back to Donna Farhi. She translates the niyamas as codes for living soulfully, which again I just love. So the Niyama that I think is relevant here is my personal favorite, which is svadhyaya, and it’s usually translated as self study. So another way we might talk about this is getting to know yourself, which includes everything that we’ve just been talking about.
(15:14):
So turning toward feeling, acknowledging, allowing bodily sensations. And then I think the next piece is getting support. So once you have come into closer contact with your own experience, I think it becomes clearer what support might be useful. So this could be a more internal process like journaling or going for a walk or hanging out with your dog or whatever you find supportive. It could also be a loved one. Somebody you know gets it, you know, just like Shannon sending in this question where we can all kind of talk about this from a place of a shared desire at least. Um, and then it could also be professional support like a therapist or whatever is relevant to you. And like I mentioned, there’s support in nature, animals, music, creative expression, many other things. And then I think from this place of acknowledgement and support, then you might find other actions that you also want to take. So it could be writing about your experience, talking with the person who caused harm — if that feels safe. And that is a big if. Engaging in fat activism in whatever way makes sense for you, et cetera. I believe that whatever that looks like, if it’s part of your path that will become illuminated as you do the work of Satya and svadhyaya and practice and tuning in. So I hope that’s helpful. It’s definitely very nuanced and I think has a lot, you know, like we’re each bringing our own experience to it. So it’s going to be a little bit different at least if not a lot different for each of us listening and if anybody else has thoughts or wants to share what they do, please pass it along. And I definitely think the most important part is just acknowledging like this sucks and this hurts and I don’t have to brush that off or ignore it. It’s actually an important part of my process to name it and feel it.
(17:28):
Okay. So let’s move into some reminders. So studio members, we still have another week of The Kind 29. Does February feel longer to you even though there’s only one extra day? It does to me. So I will link those resources for you in the show notes, and as always, if you’re not yet a member, you’re welcome to join us at curvyyoga.studio. I will also link that if you have questions, comments, ideas for future episodes. You know, I’m very into hearing all of it, so please send it my way podcast@curvyyoga.com you can text at (615) 852-8789 or get in touch with me on Instagram @curvyyoga.
(18:14):
Okay, let’s close with one breath together. We’ll inhale and exhale. The light in me honors the light in you. Namaste. Stay tuned next week where I will be sharing what I learned during our month of kindness.