The Forgiving Meal

by Jen Whinnen

One morning over winter break I found Jack with his head buried into his Dad’s chest, choking back tears. When I asked him what was wrong, he said “Jai said he wishes Z was his brother instead of me.”

Ouch.

These are harsh from any sibling, but it’s especially harsh coming from a little brother whose adoration has always been absolute. My boys have, for the most part, enjoyed a pretty close friendship. The bedrock of this friendship is Jai’s unwavering belief that Jack is the world’s greatest big brother. Jai identifies himself as “Jack’s Brother.” That’s how he introduces himself, how he knows himself. To Jai, Jack knows every good thing in the world, has shown him every good thing in the world, and always has his back. Because of this, Jai has always been happy to step back and bask in his brother’s glow. 

That is, until recently. Lately they are like two little tributaries, diverging off in different directions. Jack sometimes just wants to be left alone. Jai never wants to be alone. Jack finds himself annoyed and frustrated by his little brother. Jai is constantly being hurt by the rejection. My hope is that some day they will merge back into the same river, that they will find the same flow, but right now they bicker. They pick on each other. They yell and fight a lot.  

Over the break Jack’s best friend spent a few days visiting us. Jack didn’t want to share his friend.  He was mean, telling Jai to go away, not including him. To someone who’s always been included in every activity, who sees Jack as his best friend, this hurt. It hurt a lot. So, Jai went for the jugular. 

“I wish you weren’t my brother! I wish Z was my brother instead!”  

Jack was crushed. And then, of course, he got mad back. “Jai is the worst brother in the world! I will never forgive him! Never!”

My older son is at a (highly dramatic) crossroads. He can choose to retaliate, to say something cruel, to punch his brother. He can go on excluding him, tell him he’s a terrible brother, that he never wants to see him again. All the anger options were on the table. And they all looked pretty good. Anger and Revenge always come ready to party. They bring the dishes with the best sauces and most delicious toppings. Dripping in buttery pools of contempt and sugary indignation, they are so very, very appealing. 

That is why, when I pointed out the small, steamed, unadorned plate of empathy and forgiveness, Jack gagged. Where’s the sweet satisfaction of retribution in a small plate of humble pie? I want to carbo load on gooey piles of hot, steaming anger! Where is my righteous heartburn if I put myself in someone else’s shoes? 

I tried to reason with him, “Try and understand where Jai is coming from. How would you feel if you were being excluded?” 

As Jack railed against my logic and I continued to try and reason with him I thought “oh man, I sound just like my dad!” and I groaned a little inside. My dad had this “empathy and forgiveness” lecture/sermon that he usually delivered after I’d had a fight with one of my sisters. I would sit on my bed, staring at the bedspread patterns, twirling a loose thread around my finger, and meow out while he droned on and on and on about how important it was to let go of your anger, to try and put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to forgive. 

Of course he wasn’t wrong. To give in to rage, passionate anger and indignation is a kind of suffering. We are the ones who have to struggle through it and if we don’t let it go, it stays with us. It compromises our peace. It wears us down. 

In my years of recovery after my dad died, I spent many a bitter thought lambasting my dad’s philosophy. I saw it as his manipulative way of not taking responsibility for his past, for forcing us into “forgiving” him and never taking responsibility. But, what I understand now is that he wasn’t telling me “just forgive me so I feel better about me,” but “forgive so you feel better.” He was trying to tell me that he couldn’t do it for me. I had to make that choice. I could hold tight to my anger forever, nurse it for as long as I wanted, or I could chose to forgive. Either choice is viable. But, either way I must choose. 

My little pep talk with Jack yielded exactly zero empathy result. (I totally get why my dad held me hostage for so long – kids are stubborn!) I let him go and an hour later all the boys were playing together just fine. Such is the memory of a child! 

However, I am still here thinking about anger. Anger is a force, a power. It’s not bad per say. There are times when it can be useful. But it is a powerful force. It can rule us or we can choose to master it. I know that I often use it to distraction. I get mad for petty reasons, I punish unnecessarily. I use it as a default in many ways for dealing with the day-to-day mundane things I don’t like. 

And that’s an abuse of power.

With the inauguration less than 24 hours away many of us feel pretty angry. Understandably so. It’s important that we remember why we’re angry and remain vigilant in our support of those working for social justice and our public health. 

It’s also important to remember how much that anger and frustration taxes us, how much it takes from us. 

So what to do? I’m not entirely sure. I do know that I need to lean into my practice more. Yoga teaches us to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. It shows us how to engage while disengaging from the ego. It helps us remain calm and practical. These practices are going to be vital in the years to come. 

Since I can not control anyone other than myself, I will offer you my own personal “treatise” for the coming administration in hopes that it might help you too:

1. I will continue to try and engage in political discourse with those who do not share my views respectfully and with an open mind. 
2. I will continue to resist social injustice and support those organizations that align with my morals and values. 
3. I will continue to teach my children the importance of empathy, sympathy and compassion (whether they like it or not).
4. I will try to do all of this with as little anger as possible. 

When I step up to the emotional table and take a look around at all of the offerings, I will try and remember to choose the healthier, lighter options. I will aim to take small portions of the gooey stuff and go easy on the gravy. Hopefully by the end of the meal I will be able to walk away from the table less bloated and a little lighter. 

I hope the same for you.

Resilience Training

by Jen Whinnen

Whew, what a season this has been!

I’ve sat down a dozen times to try and write the opening of this newsletter and I keep getting stuck. I find myself just sitting, staring at a confused screen full of jumbled thoughts and messy sentences. I don’t have adequate words for what’s been happening in this country and in my own personal life. I am entirely inadequate. I feel completely incapable of completing the tasks set before me. Where do we go when we feel there’s so much to do, and so many people to protect, and we’re so full of worry and doubt that we just want to flee? I don’t actually have an answer for that. Oh how I wish I did!

However, I do know that we have to keep plugging along. We have to keep trying to be the best, most loving, most supportive people we can be. And to do that, we have to refine our resilience skills. Because resilience, the ability to accept that things are going to be hard and uncomfortable, but to keep doing it anyway, will fortify us.

Resilience can be learned. And I know this because I was in my late my 20’s before I had any resilience skills. Before that every time something got uncomfortable, I quit. I simply didn’t know how to be uncomfortable. When I was “bad” at something, I assumed that meant I was bad at that thing forever and gave up.

So how did I learn otherwise? Yoga, of course! The routine of a regular yoga practice, of teaching myself to just show up regardless of how “bad” I was at it, slowly changed my mindset and taught me how to try again. This seemingly basic skill, learning how to start all over again, created the conditions for success and wellbeing. Thanks so much yoga!

Now, I’m not going to say that yoga will fix the current state of affairs. It won’t. We can’t fix community problems by going to a yoga class. But, yoga can calm the mind. It can help unbind bound emotions and give us a moment of pause. And in those moments we find a path, a way of being of service, a way to hold down the fort, to protect others. The practice itself won’t do the big things, but it will direct us to ways that we can. So, get on your mat again and again. Use it to reveal the path you need to take to muddle through these murky waters.

And then, get off the mat and do the things. Use the practice to teach you to be flawed, but dogged in your pursuits. Don’t give up, but also know that you are going to have bad practices. And then get up and do it again. Be redundant in your effort. Show up every day and stick with it.

You are proficient, powerful and have so much offer so get to it!

Entitled to Our Yoga?

by Jen Whinnen

Several months ago New York Magazine published an article that opened with a seasoned teacher that had lost her studio and now works in retail. The reason for her loss was the commercialization of yoga. The glut of corporate yoga studios and teacher trainings churning out poorly trained teachers, combined with the trend towards turning yoga into an entertainment industry, pushed her out of a job. Then, another article popped up on my feed just last month decrying much the same thing; that modern yoga has become a wasteland, a glut of teacher trainings pooping out poorly trained teachers and a relatively worthless credentialing system to govern the lot of them.

Every time I read an article like this I bristle. One, because, as the director and owner of a yoga teacher training school, I am the accused and the accursed. It’s irresponsible people like me that are creating the glut in the market. And two, because, while I think this is an attempt to shed light on how yoga is being taught and passed on to the next generation, it’s actually a commentary on the changing economics of pedaling yoga. The commerce of yoga is not the same thing as the study of yoga. And lumping the two together is, and always has been, the problem. 

Both the teachers showcased in these articles were “successful” yoga teachers. Meaning, they made good money. They had their own studios, they were given products, featured in magazines, etc. Then the waves of economy shifted, there was a ground swell, and they got swept up. When something like this happens there is questioning and inevitably that questioning is answered with a lot of finger pointing, shaming and recrimination. Such is the way of the world.

But here’s the thing; when you create and participate in a culture that glorifies your beauty and your physical prowess, one day you aren’t going to be the prettiest girl in the room. Some day there is going to be a new, younger, prettier thing and she is going to take your place. That is how that system works. 

What happened to the economics of yoga (which again, is not the same thing as Yoga)  is something that has been in the pipeline for a long time. This “commercialization” was not an amorphic sneaky force that popped up suddenly. Putting beautiful and highly accomplished athletes on the covers of magazines and on products, offering swag to teachers and promoting them as “rock stars” has been the norm for over 20 years. And we, the generation of 40+ year old yoga teachers, are the ones who created and perpetuated it. It didn’t happen to us. It happened because of us. The mirror reflects. 

The idea that yoga teachers are entitled to a good job because we have a lot of years of experience is hubris. Since when was our education and experience a guarantee of anything? Sure it can be helpful, but it is by no means a guaranteed ticket to ride. Yoga owes us nothing. We are here to serve, to participate, to do, to be. The choice to make teaching one’s sole means of income is one’s own. If I commodify my experience I have decided that my self worth is driven by a dollar amount and I am responsible for that decision. This is not to say that we are right or wrong for doing so, but no one owes us the right to make it so because we want it. 

Allow me to provide a very different kind of “yoga career” narrative; I’ve been practicing yoga for 22 years, teaching for 18. I have thousands of training and teaching hours. I am both a skilled and qualified yoga teacher and I constantly endeavor to become better at my craft. Nevertheless, of my 18 years of teaching, only 4 of them have been spent without another job. Four. Fourteen of the 18 years of teaching I’ve supplemented my income with another, non-yoga related job. 

Teaching to me is a gift, a blessing, a chance to share something I love. Because of this, I don’t look at the commercialization of yoga as the reason I had to work a second job or why my little school has remained little. In fact, I feel the exact opposite. Yoga is more popular today than it has ever been. More and more people are discovering its benefits. The huge money machines that pump out the silly, glitzy, over priced products are creating a steady stream of curious students. People who might not have ever been exposed to yoga are interested in this topic because the corporate machine has normalized it and I think this is a good thing. 

Are there piles of bad teachers and terrible classes? Yes, of course. This is the United States of  America. Excess is our calling card. But scratch beneath the surface and we find so many people who are interested in this subject, craving connection to others, looking for a way to experience health and wellbeing. They are seeking more information. One of the teachers in the above articles spoke about how, in each of his “bad” teacher trainings, he was routinely confronted with a room full of people with little or no yoga practice. He was forced to un-train bad habits, and basically recreate the wheel. While I understand objectively how frustrating that might be, I personally find it delightful! I love sitting down with a new group of curious and eager students, helping them figure out proper alignment, to engage in meaningful discourse, to facilitate loving relationships with themselves and others. To me, a 200 hour course is, at it’s best, a primer, a first step into deeper learning. It should teach you how to study, to pique your curiosity and inspire you to keep learning. It is a platform, a learning tool. And it is in no way sacred. 

The demise or sanctity of modern yoga isn’t really an issue. Yoga will continue beyond this iteration. These teachings survive because they are Truth. And Truth is not affected by commercialism. 

It’s not yoga’s job to support me. It’s not yoga’s job to ensure that I am able to continue doing what I’m doing. That’s my job. And we are not entitled to a life just because we desire it to be so. As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite stanzas from the Bhagavad Gita is “You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits. Do not let the fruits of action be your motive, but do not attach yourself to nonaction.” (2.47) So do the work. If you are successful, so be it. And if you are not successful? 

Find something else to do.