Sorry Germaine

I think I sounded a little dismissive of Germaine Greer a few posts ago, and I have to completely take it back. The Female Eunuch is just as rad as The Feminine Mystique, and is definitely killing me softly with its insight. It was published in 1971, seven years before I was born, and it's not like the second this thing was published the whole world changed, so its relevancy reverberates, for sure. I think what she is talking about in terms of the cultural pathologizing of women's bodies, sexual repression, conflicting messages of school and culture (you can do anything! be pretty above all else! you can do whatever you want! we have no guidance for you on that except that you should fear you own autonomy!), all still very much applies to my upbringing - especially since my upbringing wasn't exactly orchestrated by progressive radicals.

Here's something from Ms. Greer that, the second I read it, occurred to me as obvious and true even though I'd never thought of like this before - even though I traffic with the "energy" and "feeling" folk in my yoga world:

"It's not too hard to point out to the averagely perceptive human being that women have plenty of the destructive kind of energy, but far fewer people can see that women's destructiveness is creativity turned in upon itself by constant frustration."

Yes. This is true. So what is our constant frustration? Expectation. Prescriptions of feminine identity. How about self-loathing, Germaine? Why, yes, Martha, that too:

"Women cannot love because, owing to a defect in narcissism, they do not rejoice in seeing their own kind. . . . . Those women who boast most fulsomely of their love for their own sex . . . usually have curious relations with it, intimate to the most extraordinary degree but disloyal, unreliable and tension-ridden, however close and longstanding they may be."

So I think women can, generally speaking, love just fine, but gazing back through time at the human wreckage of my own series of failed female friendships, I can see how my own self-loathing played a large part in their destruction. A less defective kind of narcissism, which I am equating with self-assurance, would have really helped. My female friendships didn't start to stay manageable until I was about 23; I was still learning (I am still learning). I think a lot of adult women have had to work pretty hard not to feel lessened by other women who seem more professional, more fit, happier, whatever - nowadays anybody with a perfect life just looks like a real kool-aid drinker to me, and I'm finally starting to feel at ease enough with myself not to have to hate people with "cooler" lives.

So anyway this stuff is really inspiring me to unleash a little bit. When I recognize myself in The Female Eunuch, and I am being described as the sum total of my having successfully adapted to the fear and and violence of my oppressors, it certainly spurs a little rebellion in me. In some ways I am, in my feminine identity, not fully expressed in my human identity. So I am thinking especially of my musical/lyrical self, which I tend to comb and preen a little bit to sound more neutral than it needs to be, more universal sounding that it needs to be; this could get much more sincere to my inner gestures, less edited, than I permit it to be.

In sum: I love Germaine Greer.

Taught my Yoga Trainee Class Yesterday

So yesterday I taught a class at the yoga studio for two of my fellow trainees and one of the teachers. Man oh man I was a mess for a little while beforehand. I wanted to be really impressive but of course you can't just become someone with ten years of yoga teaching experience in 4 months. And I had something all prepared to say in the beginning of the class and I got flustered and it didn't come out the way that I wanted it to, and I was pretty worried about sounding stupid, which I might have. Note to self: write it out in complete sentences and bring it with you to class.

The other thing about it was that I didn't have any music - this is a whole additional dimension that I just wasn't ready to incorporate. Plus they have ipod hook ups at the studio and yo no tiene un "ipod." The silence had a mixed effect - on the one hand, I like silence when I am practicing because sometimes it really distracts me; silence helps you go within a little better, I think. On the other hand, golly gee a little music goes a long way in carrying the vibe along in the room - I noticed that my voice and its timbre were a little more serious than I think of myself being, and so that was kind of the vibe I was making, I'm sure. But I could have added a little levity to the experience with some happy tunes. I went to another trainee's class yesterday and she had really fun, sassy pop and jazz music playing, and it just went really well with her whole vibe and vision and it has restored a little of my interest in having music to go along with the experience.

The feedback I got from the teacher and my two fellow students was a little mixed - the class was sort of lacking in back bends, which means that a more advanced student might not feel all that "complete" upon leaving the class - exploring a full range of physical movement is good for that all-over "yoga-ed" feeling. This was good advice, and my class was hampered in this respect by my own limitations with back bending (exxxtreme limitations!) and by my own class planning - I spent a little too much time on the stading poses and by the time we were done I saw that we kind of had to wrap it up, and I really wanted the class to be exactly one hour and thirty minutes, no fudging. Also maybe the class could have been harder, they said - they were wondering when we were really going to go for it, but then they felt that the challenge and difficulty of the class wasn't necessarily in the lots and lots of movement sense, but more in the precision sense. If that's true then that's awesome.

Some stuff I see will come with time, like fluidity of speech, and general confidence, and all that stuff - and I just have to keep doing more and more yoga at home and become really familiar with what I want to communicate, and things will only get better, I just have to practice. I can't wait to practice on my friends on Sunday!

First Class Weekend

And it was both first-class and the first class in the yoga teacher training undertaking. AS WELL AS the weekend of my AC/DC cover band's big show, so man oh man, talk about trying to be a fun-lovin' social-times haver as well as a student of physical and spiritual discipline!

So teacher training was great. I had a bunch of hesitations about how this was going to go, based on my usual eye-roller type of approach to corny stuff. I mean, when I think of who would be doing the training, I definitely picture corny people with herbs and bells and hugs and stuff. But I am doing it, and I like herbs and bells and hugs and I don't really think of myself as corny, so the first order of business to was confront my judgment against Corniness. The teacher asked us to set an intention for the experience to return to in our minds throughout the next six months, and I decided that mine is to think to myself that I am open to this experience. See, that sounds corny, but I am totally open to that. And it wasn't that corny and neither were the people, really, so there's that. I think I actually am much Cornier than I think I am, and I am totally open to that too. Boom.

The other hesitations were related to the curriculum and the books - there aren't a ton of books in this experience, and just one anatomy book, and the classes this weekend didn't have a touchstone text associated with the learning. I like a reference text to study, and maybe that's coming but maybe not. So I was running into my expectations about what is a credible experience, and I think because I went to law school my opinion about what is legitimate learning is probably way cranked up, like if it's not basically impossible to keep up with what's happening even if you study 24/7, then you're not really doing anything. It's such a puritanical boot-camp kind of mentality. But so far this is a completely different kind of learning, since I really did learn a lot, and again, yes, totally open to that. I actually thought of that when I felt myself feeling disappointed that I probably wouldn't have to memorize the skeletal system and point out bones on a dummy in order to pass the class. I am good at memorizing and this disappointment is probably vanity-related. And I can absolutely do that myself if it increases my own sense of credibility anyway.

What we did do was some ice-breaker stuff, which was nice - 10 women and 1 man I think! Yoga is frequently a chick sport. And then we spent the first day dissecting and critiquing everyone's expressions of two poses. We had to talk each other into the poses and learn some gentle assists to demonstrate alignment for each other, and man is that harder than it sounds. The articulating of how to move one's body is really difficult, and the impulse to over-talk is overwhelming. I just wanted to keep talking, saying things like, "okay, now move your foot - the right foot - wait, I mean front foot - more over to the left, and then think of lifting up - up in the legs, but more over with the torso, but also over, I mean up" - blah blah blah so yeah it's hard to be brief and clear and helpful when speaking, so I will be practicing that on any friends who will let me.

And the learning about the alignment of the poses was good too, and I'm sort of excited to work like crazy on the handful of poses we did this weekend with my new, teacherly insights. Can't wait for the next teacher weekend! Go Team Corny!

So on to the AC/DC show. Yes, Saturday night, after much anticipation, my law school dude buddies and I rocked the be-dickens out of a tiny night club in Albany, NY. I love being in the AC/DC cover band, and I think it's because even though I think of rock and roll and beers and hanging out as being the activities of my "other self," I actually have to really tap into my most disciplined and attentive self to make it work. Because the thing is, I am not actually super great at playing the guitar, and I have to practice and practice and practice and straight up memorize the things that I see other musicians just intuitively understanding (which may be a function of their having practiced like hell to be good, but it always seems like magic to me). This is because even though I have been playing guitar a long time, I never really liked to practice playing guitar that much. I always just strummed and hummed and figured it out without thinking too hard about what was happening, and that was always fine. But to truly rock super hard and super loud and super fun is pretty difficult - and it's because the payoff of rocking out is so exciting in my mind that I can be pretty dedicated to practicing my AC/DC songs. Also I don't want to let down my band mate friends, that would be horrible. Anyway the release available in the moment of the show is most rewarding when I've practiced to the point that I don't have to worry about my hands doing the right thing, I can just go for it, and everyone plays together and can listen to each other without having to worry about getting it right, but just letting it happen. Good stuff.

Time and again in my life I find that discipline is always the gateway to freedom. Learning the dance moves so you can flail with abandon. Getting in shape so you can hike to the more beautiful view. Learning the chords so you can just play and have fun. I think I know this somewhere inside me about yoga and the spiritual stuff, too - I know that somewhere on the other side of the breathing and the poses and the meditation is unlimited abandon and freedom (corny meter off the charts with that). It just takes a lot of practice and focus to experience that abandon, and I know the kernel of desire for that payoff is in me, I just need to embrace the Corniness and all that stuff and let that kernel grow as big as my desire to rock out.

Hoorah, continuity! Totally just threaded yoga and AC/DC together for myself.