Yoga is not what you think it is

The merry band of boot campers have been up and at ‘em since 6am.

An hour of mobility drills and shuttle sprints for breakfast down by the harbour.

Afterwards, they join me for 30-40mins of ‘yoga’ on the beach. The sun has already popped and it’s a beautiful, windless day, on sand that is almost too perfect. I suspect it gets groomed by a tractor of some sort.

Fuelled by…

Yoga done.

It’s now 0830am and the call is made for espresso’s at a harbour side coffee shop before we return to the villa for poached eggs which the students are, by now, drooling over the prospect of.

A guy from Manchester joins me for conversation over coffee. We have some communalities and have a lovely talk about somatics, yoga, and modern dance.

He’s been involved with modern dance since he was pretty much press-ganged  into going on a course through school as part of the ‘at least one male’ funding requirements.

He must have impressed the academy as he received a scholarship to attend the prestigious London dance school thereafter.

He caught me off guard when he then asked “How was your night’s sleep”.

I had intended to brush the question off with the standard, “Yeah, good thanks!”, a bit like when someone asks how you’re doing.

Somehow, my soul managed to find its way to my voice, and I said “Yeah…I don’t know??” For probably just a moment longer than was comfortable, I stared far off into the distance, with a furrowed brow.

Eventually I found myself saying, “At one time I could sleep on a clothes line but when you have kids it’s like having your heart on the outside of the body”.

I read someplace that autistic folks find it impossible to lie, and I’m only now waking up to the fact I must surely be some flavour of neurodivergent.  A though it’s hard to tell where neurodivergence begins and trauma ends. I’m certainly finding small-talk increasingly difficult.

I mention this to the my new male dancing inspiration and he said, “We used to just call that ‘having a “personality’”.

His tone was warm and inclusive and not cold and dismissive so I took that to mean we could all be, all the things, and not worry too much about the diagnosing or labelling.

Although labels can be healing sometimes too.

He followed that up with, “I never found a way in to yoga”.

He explained that it was never a release for him like everyone else seemed to experience.

I imagine his years of embodied dance had given him space in his body that other people had yet to find.

I think many of us need beating into submission with 90mins of intense yoga or a 2hr massage.  I know I did at the start of my yoga journey.

The thing with forcing the body into these exhaustive and euphoric states - yoga, cold water immersion, psychedelics, rebirth breathing etc. - in order to relax, is you never quite figure out how to get there on your own terms.

“You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” - Michael Caine

Another lady here on camp has mentioned her negative experience of yoga. Of going on a retreat and being blown wide open only to be sent home bewildered, frightened and feeling more vulnerable than ever. She’s not been back to yoga since.

Sadly, I think this happens all too often in yoga spaces. This drive to ‘heal’ this worshiping of ‘authentic’ emotions.

If you’re going to pull somebody apart, at least have the courtesy to stick around for the rebuilding.

I could be wrong but I don’t think we yoga teachers need to be pulling people apart full stop. Life will do that well enough on its own.

I wondered again about my kids and the vulnerability of not really being able to protect them despite all my high alert efforts.

And maybe that’s by design and not chance.

We either continue down this road of doubling down on fear and protection;  Creating systems and countries of wealth and cold technological methods of far away violence. Methods that wall off certain families from exposure at the expense of others.

Or…we accept that we can’t. That we’re all so desperately vulnerable that we need to tread with great care and clarity.

Not only are my children a living breathing heart on the outside of my body but your children are too.

History and politics are alien subjects to me but it seems to me that the children of Palestine are currently being sacrificed by ‘western nations’ in order to build a safer world for our European families and I don’t know what to do with this information except be with it.

Have you soothed your nervous system today my dears?

Go do that.

Make yourself feel safe.

We can only start there.