I’m A Yoga Teacher: ask Me Anything

yes, literally

This post may contain Grey’s Anatomy Spoilers, particularly if you are more than a decade behind.

Through the ebbs and flows of my seasonal depression/perimenopause/second winter of COVID, I found myself confined to the lifeboat of the couch, simultaneously rewatching Grey’s Anatomy and scrolling through the small screen in search of connection, my lost youth, and eau de palpable possibility in the years of the Obama era. I watched Meredith, whose character is my age exactly, navigate the absolute absurdity of life as a surgical intern in a time before smart phones. To pass the time, I’d often google the conditions or lab values in the episodes with my small screen and occasionally click myself over to twitter, where quite a community of physicians had formed to discuss emerging diseases, epidemiology, and other quirks of medicine. Naturally, I fell in with them, and curated a strange new hobby of seeking out the physicians who were in low moments posting inquiries about whether or not they were in fact idiots or worthy or doing meaningful work.

As with most folks truthfully embroiled with insecurity, if you’re worried about whether or not you are good enough, you probably are. If you are not worried, you ought to be. This point has been recently re-re-reemphasized in the Olympics and political stages of the month of August, which is presently three days old.

I took to offering reassurance to those who had spent days-long shifts facing off with either the new mystery illness of the pandemic or the precipitously worse conditions of the system of American healthcare.

I wasn’t blowing smoke, I was saying the things I’ve always said to yoga students in my classroom to the folks in the interconnected virtual hand-held web. You’re doing hard things. Important work. It is hard and possibly impossible. Keep going. This was far better than my previous time-waster of picking fights in private Facebook groups, usually on behalf of someone else, but still. Actions unbecoming of a yoga teacher AND waste of energy.

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My best one - for the record - was in a group for Denver yoga students. A fellow who purported to be ‘new in town’ was looking for ‘hot yoga - the real kind, not like [fill in several well known and popular studios].’ His main complaint was that they weren’t hot enough (he wanted something 104 or better!) and they didn’t involve enough complexity for him. Basically the worst of humble brags, and worse in large part due to the other yoga teachers clamoring for his affection. “Come try my class! Let’s go to this one! Let’s FIND THE YOGA FOR YOU!!!”

Cute.

In my self important assholery, I suggested he volunteer for Habitat for Humanity as a roofer, as it was summer and that would most certainly offer him not only the heat and physical complexity he was seeking, but an opportunity to actually practice something like service or collective liberation.

It was removed by the OG poster, but not before it received MANY applauses and DMs.

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Somewhere in the middle of season 87 of Grey’s, I accidentally realized that not all doctors are smarter than I am, but that many of them demonstrated tenacity, endurance, and bravery. They stayed in a race I quit, a fact I stated a few times in DMs before it rose to the level of my own consciousness.

When twitter fell under new ownership, many of the physicians I had connected with left for safer pastures, and it didn’t take long for me to follow. Worse than reverting to a blather of bumper stickers that I didn’t relate to, the algorithm went sideways and a bevy of bots filled my DMs with inquiries about my feet. I left in search of the medical community I had cultivated yonder, on several alternate platforms which tried to. capture the market. Threads has emerged as the most robust replacement, and haven’t really found the docs there, although I do bop over once and awhile.

It’s gotten quite interesting this past week, not only due to politics and Olympics, but in my tiny sliver of the world, I saw an irresistible snarky yoga post. She referenced her own blog as Evidence To Support her Point, which is absolutely adorable*.

“DO NOT ask your yoga teacher for medical advice - ask your doctor. Do NOT ask your yoga teacher for nutrition advice, ask your nutritionist…” etc, and with a bit more shamey spackle and a lot more lot more.

I did the bad thing there, and am pivoting here to share what I meant to say (which is truly why any good writer anywhere writes anything).